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Berlin, March 25, 2014
During the dressing-room celebrations in Berlin, [Franck] Ribery split [assistant coach] Manel Estiarte's lip.
With seven games still to play Bayern had won the Bundesliga title. They had faithfully applied and even exceeded the objectives set out by Pep's recipe for winning a league: don't lose it in the first eight matches and then nail it in the last eight. After today's game, they were 25 points ahead of Borussia Dortmund with only 21 still up for grabs. They had beaten his formula by seven [match] days.
This was the seventh consecutive time that Bayern had clinched the title away from home and they had done so with style. They were two up within 12 minutes and looked unstoppable.
Pep altered the plans for the game which had been constructed over the previous few days and asked the two wing-backs to play wide, not inside. It was based on his understanding that Hertha would man-mark; if he put Rafinha and Alaba wide whilst attacking it would oblige Hertha to defend with six guys in a defensive line in order to cover the two wing-backs, the wingers, the striker and an attacking midfielder. That would mean that the middle of the pitch would be open territory for Bayern.

	At 2am, Pep Guardiola stepped on to the dance floor, a novel spectacle for even his closest friends, who were more used to seeing him sitting surrounded by friends and colleagues chatting about a million and one things, most of them related to football
As planned, Mueller, Goetze, Robben, Kroos and Schweinsteiger took total control of the midfield and at half-time, with the title pretty much in the bag, several players commented to Pep that things had gone precisely as he predicted they would.
[...]

Bayern won 3-1, and in doing so became the first team to win the Bundesliga in March, and had won the league title earlier in the season than any other team in the history of any of the great European football championships. After 27 games they had accumulated 25 wins and two draws, with 79 goals scored and only 13 conceded. Their record-breaking league campaign had produced an average of almost three goals per game (2.92) as well as an unprecedented defensive record (0.48 goals per match conceded).
The dressing-room celebrations ended up with everyone in the swimming pool. Earlier in the evening [assistant manager] Hermann Gerland, normally a serious man of few words, told Guardiola: "Pep, you are a genius."

By midnight, Estiarte was sporting a couple of stitches in his lip after Ribery elbowed him accidentally as the team dragged him into the swimming pool. The team then moved on to the official party, where the festivities really took off. In actual fact, the club had had nothing to do with this part of the evening, which had been masterminded by Schweinsteiger, the squad's self-appointed party planner. Just eight days previously Schweini had thrown a fancy-dress party for his teammates and their partners and tonight he was playing host in Berlin's Kitty Cheng Bar, in the Mitte district.
At 2am, Pep Guardiola stepped on to the dance floor, a novel spectacle for even his closest friends, who were more used to seeing him sitting surrounded by friends and colleagues chatting about a million and one things, most of them related to football.
In Marrakech after winning the Club World Cup, for example, he had celebrated by having a quiet chat with his mates.
[...]

But in Berlin things were to take a very different turn. David Alaba took charge of the music, acting both as DJ and lead vocalist. The sheer exuberance of his players proved so infectious that for the first time in his coaching life Guardiola decided to get up and dance with them. Just for tonight he was one of the lads, having a few drinks and really letting his hair down.
Sometime during the night, Ribery grabbed him round the neck and announced: "I love you Pep. You are in my heart, man. I'm just a street kid but you will always be in my heart. Never in my life did I think I could learn as much as I have this year."
The festivities continued well into the early hours, with Pep calling it a night just before 5am whilst several of his players made it all the way through to breakfast time. On the flight home to Munich everyone was showing the effects, and the captains repeatedly begged Pep to cancel the following day's training so that they could sleep it off. In the end, the coach gave in. Their brilliant league campaign and ultimate triumph had earned them a rest.
 
'TO HELL WITH BREAKING RECORDS'
I was keen to observe the team in their first training session after this triumph. The day after a great victory can be hugely illuminating. Would they be complacent after winning? Would they see this victory as a catalyst for future triumphs or the end of a chapter?
In the event the players were still in high spirits, particularly Schweinsteiger, who turned up at training wearing the face mask belonging to local ski champion Felix Neureuther. However, the hilarity ceased the second Pep appeared and started the warm-up. His players instantly switched into work mode as he divided them into three groups of seven for four five-minute games of "double area" plus nine speed drills centred on quick reactions and six drills for explosive speed.
Not once did they slow down or relax and, at one point, Pep came over to me to say, delightedly: "Ribery's having his best session of the year. The guy's a beast. An absolute beast."

So I had the evidence of the first training session after a major victory and it was clear that this was a team still hungry for success. A team in which every single player was fighting hard for his place in the starting line-up. There were more momentous Champions League fixtures to contest and nobody wanted to be left on the bench. At this stage no one could have imagined the thrashing they were about to suffer at Real Madrid's hands [4-0 in the semi-final].
With the league in the bag and the Champions League looming on the horizon, it felt like a good time to sit down with Pep.
"Our worst 10 minutes this season were in the Emirates. Manu's [Neuer] hand saved us that day," he reflected. "Our best? Probably the game against City in Manchester or the first 40 minutes of the Hertha match in Berlin."
I mention all the records they have broken. "To hell with breaking records! I just hope we can get our minds off breaking records. It really doesn't matter from now on if we win or lose, if we concede goals or not. We're thinking about the Champions League and the DFB-Pokal now. The league is done as far as we're concerned."

With only four days before their quarter-final tie with Manchester United, Pep was clear about the size of the challenge. "Look, even if a team appears weaker than us, they could still do us damage in the Champions League. Be in no doubt, United will put us under pressure.
"We'll need to attack with our full-backs high and wide because theirs close in tight to their centre-backs, and we'll also have to be very careful of their counter-attacks via Rooney around the edge of the box and the wide pace of Valencia and Young. They don't mind putting the ball long and I want to have our best players in the middle of the pitch in order to have and hold the ball and dominate the midfield. But, watch out - you say OLD TRAFFORD in capital letters. Mr Ferguson will be there watching and that carries a certain weight."
Bayern were going into the quarter-final as clear favourites, but Pep was sticking to his position. "I know all that," he told me, "but where is it written that Bayern are a guaranteed semi-finalist, man? The only thing I know for sure is that we have two Champions League games ahead of us and we have to win them on the pitch. That's what I'll be telling them in the pre-match talk in Manchester - we have two games to play and we have to win them if we want to play the two after that."
As he speaks, he remembers something and scribbles a reminder in his notebook: "I've got to speak to Boateng because the other day against Mainz he made a miracle tackle to stop the striker getting away from him, but it was almost a red-card intervention. If he had mistimed it by a second then he'd have been off. If something like that happens in the Champions League I'd rather we let the opponents score than be left with 10 men."

 
'PASS AND PASS ... KILL THE OPPONENT'
I decide to take advantage of this moment of relaxed reflection to ask Guardiola for his assessment of the team's progress.
"They've come on in leaps and bounds in positional play. At the beginning they struggled with it because it's a tough thing to master and they had to start from scratch, but they've done brilliantly and are total experts now. Nowadays I never need to tell them when to press or when to hold their position."
Although the positional play drills, like the rondos [a piggy-in-the-middle-style drill], are fundamental elements of Pep's work, they are nonetheless just a part of his methodology.
"There's still a lot to work on and we'll start on that next season. I have taught enough for this season and we just need to apply it in competition. Next season we'll cover more concepts. We might even lose more matches but our overall game will improve. The players will have one year of this new language behind them and they will be much more solid from the outset.
"We'll try out a wider variety of approaches: one day we'll play with three defenders, the next with the wingers pegged to the touchlines and we'll really circulate the ball in the middle of the pitch via the No.10 and the attacking midfielders. Overall I think we'll grow next season."
He talks about the ball as the key to everything. "In football, it's the ball that gives you speed, your passing. In basketball if you are dribbling the ball all the time, the defence has an easier time of it. But if instead you pass it rapidly from one player to another you create huge problems for your opponents.
"It's exactly the same in football: to you, back to me, tac-tac and you get the other guy chasing his tail, even if it doesn't seem like you're doing very much at all. That's why I'm committed to making sure that we pass the ball so often, so quickly in the opponents' half. I want my two strikers to occupy the four rival defenders.

"Better still, I'd like to achieve that with only one striker even though he'd have to be absolutely expert to achieve it, leaving the rest of the attacking players to move the ball, to create openings in the middle of the pitch.
"Pass and pass - not simply to retain the ball but to kill the opponent. Moving the ball like that gives us order and leaves the rival in disarray. Coaches like Juanma Lillo [the itinerant Spanish coach who is a mentor to Pep] and Raul Caneda [who worked closely with Lillo in Mexico and Spain] have always said this.
"It may not seem like much, but rapid-fire passing not only maintains your own organisation, but it also really messes up the other team."
However, none of this is possible if your players don't trust the system.
" Eccolo qua ! [a favourite Italian expression of Pep's - 'that's exactly it']. That's the key question. How do you seduce your players into listening to you and accepting new concepts? And I mean 'seduce' not 'motivate'. What happened at Barça was not that I failed to motivate them - they are wonderful footballers and marvellous people. No, I failed to seduce them!
"I had introduced a million tiny tactical innovations over the four years and the next step wasn't going to be easy. You look into your players' eyes and it's a bit like looking at a lover. Either you see passion and a willingness to be seduced or you watch as the passion ebbs away.
"The same thing will happen here at Bayern. After a few years I'll no longer know how to seduce my players and that will be the time to leave. It's all in the eyes. It's all about seduction."
 
Pep Confidential: The Inside Story of Pep Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich, out now in paperback and ebook, published by BackPage Press / Arena Sport


Extract from new book about Pep Guardiola's first season in charge of Bayern Munich

Pep Guardiola celebrates winning the German DFB Cup with Bayern's sports director Matthias Sammer in May, completing a domestic double. Guardiola is satisfied the squad are buying in to his system of play and he plans to continue his revolution with the Bavarian giants, as documented in Marti Peraranu's new book Pep Confidential, excerpted on this page. Photos: AFP, Reuters, EPA, AP

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Football

"You can write about everything you see and be as critical as you like in the book, but during the season please don't talk to the outside world about what you witness inside" Those were the words from Pep Guardiola,one of the most successful football managers of all time, to Marti Perarnau in 2013, when he stunned the Spanish journalist by giving him complete behind-the-scenes access to his first season in charge of Bayern Munich. Over the next year, Perarnau would be privy to every training session and team-talk, an unprecedented level of insight into one of the world's biggest clubs which he chronicles in a new book,Pep Confidential: Inside Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich. In this extract, Perarnau witnesses Guardiola's late-night celebrations after his team sealed the Bundesliga title in March, a record for any of Europe's top leagues - and the manager's ruthless dedication as he immediately plots further victories
