Inside the Pep Guardiola bubble – as told by his assistants
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Jordan Campbell
Those who have worked with the Manchester City manager speak of an intense and invigorating environment where there is constant evolution
It was October 2020 and Manchester City were experiencing a testing start to the season. They had just lost to Leicester City and drawn with Leeds United. Four points from nine. Pep Guardiola had not extended his contract and was on holiday during the international break.
Whispers were gathering that this, his fifth season in English football, could be his last. Perhaps his team’s poor start to the season was evidence that his drive and his powers were waning.
Then he made a call that dispelled any such notion. “Piet, where are you? I need you,” said Guardiola.
It was delivered with the frantic excitement that could mean only one thing: the boss had an idea.
Piet Cremers, Manchester City’s head of analysis at the time, cut short his gym session and rushed to the training ground. Guardiola spilled out every thought from his vacation. Scenery, climate and cuisine were not on the menu.
It was a new tactical structure he had dreamed up on the sun lounger. The pictures were in his head but Cremers was the man to help the players understand it.
“There was such a fire in him that day,” Cremers tells The Athletic.
Piet Cremers is now a coach with the Wales national team (Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
The vision was clear. A 3-2-5 structure in which Joao Cancelo would be instrumental as an ‘inverted’ full-back. Guardiola did not want to phase it in. He wanted to unveil it straight away. Arsenal were first up after the break and it would surprise his former assistant Mikel Arteta. It would surprise the entire league.
“It was intense. He was saying, ‘I need this, I need that’, but those are the moments you can really help him,” says Cremers.
“‘Remember, we did this training session or this game against Hoffenheim two years ago? It is related’. You would then show him and he goes, ‘Yeah, put that in’.”
By the time they had packaged together the idea to show the players the next morning, not a soul was left in the building. It was home time.
Cremers did not drive so was heading for the tram, until Guardiola offered him a lift to his flat. There was one condition: he would decide which route to take.
“I knew we would be stuck in ridiculous traffic but said, ‘OK, no problem’,” says Cremers.
“A journey that could have been 10 minutes ended up an hour and 10 minutes long. It was probably the best hour and 10 minutes of my life. We talked about tactics, national teams, family, everything.”
Welcome to life inside the Guardiola bubble: insatiable curiosity, relentless work ethic, zero complacency.
The Athletic has spoken to several of Guardiola’s assistants from across his career, some on the condition of anonymity, to provide an insight into what life is like working in the inner sanctum of one of the sport’s greatest coaches.
“I’ve always said I might not be the best assistant analyst in the world, but I felt I was perfect to work with Pep,” says Carles Planchart.
He is well placed to know. By far Guardiola’s longest-serving assistant, he was there from the very start of Guardiola’s managerial career at Barcelona B in 2007 and worked with him for more than 900 games before leaving at the end of the historic 2023-24 season, as Manchester City made it four Premier League titles in a row.
Why was he perfect? He understood how to complement a brain that very rarely stops thinking about football.
“Working with Pep means discipline, total commitment and full involvement in preparing matches around the clock,” says Planchart.
“The only times he truly switches off a little bit is after a match — and only when we win. We’ve been fortunate to experience many victories, and it is in those moments that he allows himself a tiny space to relax. That moment is brief, though.
“There are also times when he doesn’t switch off at all, not even with a win. When the next game is against a top team, he is constantly thinking about how to tweak or improve the strategy, performance and training.”
He finds the word “intense” is too simplistic to describe Guardiola, though.
“It’s not only about intensity, but about following his working methods and his ability to make everyone embrace the same mentality of collective effort,” he adds. “If you don’t align with his concepts, it would be very difficult to work with him.
“Like everyone, he has good days and bad days. But after so many years, I got to know him so well that I knew when I could say certain things and when it was better not to, as well as the way in which you say those things. The way I would do things was shaped by the way Pep felt in every single moment.”
It was a relationship that started in third-tier obscurity but the preparation and attention to detail for the first game set a precedent for the next 18 years.
Planchart, who had been managing in Catalan regional football, was hired to provide Guardiola with the intricate details of every team and player. Guardiola joined him in the mud at village club Vilassar de Dalt to spy on his first opponent as a manager, Premia.
It is the final game of that season that stands out to Planchart, though. It was a promotion play-off final in which Guardiola led a team that included Sergio Busquets and Pedro to victory over UD Barbastro.
“I have fond memories from the speech he gave. He showed his first motivational video to the players. I remember this one so clearly because it was the very first time he did that, as well as the very first time I saw something like this from a manager.”
No matter the triumphs or records broken, Guardiola never accepts standing still. Perhaps it is paranoia that the opposition will identify the next trend before him that means he comes back every summer with a grand plan on how to reroute his team’s direction, how to reinvent the fundamentals of the game.
His inspiration? It can be his own mind, the Johan Cruyff scripture he was raised on at Barcelona or the practical lessons from the intensity of English football. Other times, the source has been a random game he has watched or been alerted to.
That was the case when he became fascinated by Roberto De Zerbi’s build-up style at Shakhtar Donetsk. He wanted his assistants to give him everything possible on this new element he had spotted.
“I always appreciated that it didn’t matter whether you were a top coach or in League Two,” says Cremers.
“If he saw something he thought would help him he would buy into it. When you have won so much you could easily believe you know it all, but to stay ahead and be open to everyone is why he is the best.”
Braga manager Carlos Vicens — like Cremers, promoted from the Manchester City academy to the first team — spent four years as Guardiola’s assistant.
Carlos Vicens (left), Enzo Maresca, Pep Guardiola and Rodolfo Borrell during a 2022 training session (Lindsey Parnaby/AFP via Getty Images)
“You could not relax. He demanded that you understand the details,” says Vicens.
Even after winning the treble in 2022-23 with a 1-0 victory over Inter to claim the club’s first Champions League, there was no let-up.
“For months after that, he was still thinking about how we could have attacked better in that game and been more efficient to break the pressing of Inter,” says Vicens.
“It was the same in the conversations on the plane, over food, or watching another game on TV.”
Does that obsession lend itself to overthinking? It is the one criticism that has been levelled at him throughout his time at City, with left-field selections in Champions League knockout matches often cited as overcomplicating in ties they should have won. His assistants point to the dozens of times his outside-the-box thinking helps unlock the game.
Pep Guardiola led Manchester City to Champions League glory in 2023 (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
One such occasion came in February 2019. City were facing Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea in the league and would meet them again in the Carabao Cup final a fortnight later. They had no true full-backs and were up against Pedro and Eden Hazard.
It spelled danger but Guardiola decided he was going to start then-22-year-old Oleksandr Zinchenko, who had started 10 Premier League games since joining from Russian club Ufa two and a half years earlier. Only four of them had come during that season.
After Guardiola revealed his surprise before kick-off, some of the backroom staff were sharing their disbelief. City won 6-0 and Zinchenko became a mainstay as they finished on 98 points, one ahead of Liverpool.
The ability to convince others of what may seem like a novel idea requires more than just genius or vision. It demands charisma to sell it. Guardiola’s presentations are never the same, which is how he has kept the same players so engaged and motivated year after year.
“The way I describe it is like going into the cinema,” says Cremers.
“When the movie starts, it has to get your attention. If it doesn’t, it loses you after five or 10 minutes. With Pep, whether it was something about our play or the opposition, there was always something that engaged you straight away.
“You think, ‘Where is he going with that? I don’t understand’, but as the movie keeps playing, you walk out of that room incredibly clear on how we are going to hurt the opposition. You always left being so excited, convinced this is going to work.”
It would be natural to presume Guardiola is a single-minded genius but those who have been part of his coaching team are unanimous that he is open to anyone’s input.
It is why he has always been comfortable with his staff being refreshed, such as this summer when Juanma Lillo, Inigo Dominguez and Vicens were replaced by Pep Lijnders, Kolo Toure and James French.
Whereas other coaches they have worked with can be guilty of speaking about vague, overarching principles, Guardiola so clearly articulates what he wants from his assistants that they know exactly how to deliver. They are given full autonomy as part of a truly collaborative process.
“He trusts you to do a job and tries not to interfere,” says Vicens.
“At the same time, because he is so demanding of himself in the things you see him doing, you want to do it at your best to help him and not let him down.”
Wanting to please Guardiola — it is a quality he inspires in his staff that owes much to how he leads by example. It is also what drives the culture that has made his teams serial winners, never content with what they have.
“Pep would remind them often,” Vicens adds. “He used to say what you’ve achieved is amazing. You will always be remembered but you start from zero every season. To do it again, you have to do more, as everyone wants to beat you.
“That is what is so unique. How he kept them hungry and playing at the same level. He doesn’t get enough credit for that.”
Last season was perhaps the biggest test of Guardiola’s work ethic, given City won only 11 of 31 games during a brutal three-month period. They were without Rodri and nearly all of their senior centre-backs and he had to find a way to survive. They did, finishing third and reaching the FA Cup final, but there were times he looked like a beaten man.
“It wasn’t the case he had lost the spark,” says Vicens.
“When the tough months arrived, he was constantly trying to find ways out. He kept trying and working hard. That’s what we did. He never gave up. When we recovered some of the players, we got back on track.
“The season when we won the treble, we were lucky that everyone was fit. That brings extra energy and you don’t realise how important it is. We cannot deny it is hard to lose big players and keep winning but Pep found a way and that’s what people should recognise. Last season says lots about him. I saw the human being behind the coach and I’m glad I spent those four years with him.”
Almost every coach and player, even those who have worked with other greats, say they watch the game through his eyes now. None, though, would pretend to process football like Guardiola.
“I watched games from a higher perspective in a wide angle (sitting in the stands), which is easier to see football from a tactical perspective,” says Planchart.
“Considering how hard it is to read the game from the sideline, it was incredible that at half-time, all his assessments made from the pitch matched my analysis. He has an incredible ability to understand everything happening during the match. Most of the time, my job is just to reinforce what he wants to get across, his message.”
Planchart remembers the hugs Guardiola gave after each game. He felt it was a reflection of the values and hard work they built during their time together but will always admire his former boss’s boldness, regardless of which staff he has supporting him.
“I could tell he was different from the very first time we met,” Planchart adds. “Most of the coaches I have met, or played against, are very focused on defensive work.
“Pep is a genius when it comes to creating chances, starting from the offensive build-up and managing to reach the opponent’s box in the best conditions to create chances, always through the collective work of the whole team.
“I am convinced that preparing games to win is far more challenging than preparing matches simply not to lose, which is why Pep is No 1.”
