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national team. Leo was spectacularly angry, so
much so that his contribution during the few minutes he did play was almost non-existent and he didn’t turn up for training the next day. From that day onwards Messi did not miss a game.
    Messi’s role was something to think about. Pep had created a team that revolved around the diminutive, record-breaking Argentinian and there was an abundance of forwards who had come and
gone (Ibrahimovi ć , Eto’o, Bojan; even David Villa had to get used to playing on the wing, although upon his arrival he had been told that he would be
Barça’s number nine) having been unable to fit in in a style of play that demanded submission to Messi. When the team began to falter, especially in away games, the Argentinian was
given more responsibility and Pep selected sides to support him: but that prioritising of Messi reduced others’ responsibilities and terrified the younger players.
    Messi ended up netting seventy-three goals that 2011–12 season in all competitions. In contrast, the next highest goalscorers were Cesc and Alexis with fifteen each. Pep was creating a
goalscoringmonster but collectively the team was suffering for it – and he knew he was as responsible for this situation as any of his players. As Johan Cruyff said:
‘Guardiola has had to control a lot of egos in the dressing room. It’s not surprising that he has run out of energy.’
    Pep Guardiola rang one of the world game’s leading managers to ask him one question: if you get to a situation where the balance seems broken, what do you do? Do you go or do you change
players? He was given the answer that he perhaps didn’t want to hear: you change players. That is what Sir Alex Ferguson has always done, but clearly the United manager feels less beholden to
his footballers, both morally and emotionally, than Pep, who invested an awful lot of personal feeling into his first experience as a manager. Too much, in fact. Guardiola needed pills to help him
sleep and would go for walks with his partner and their children to help him to find some sort of emotional balance.
    At one point the team trailed thirteen points behind Madrid. ‘What I have done so far doesn’t guarantee me anything, if the fans have their doubts they will have their own reasons
for that,’ he said in one of the most delicately poised moments of the season. The statistics were still impressive, but less so than in the previous three seasons: the team was losing its
competitive edge and Pep felt it was his fault. After the defeat to Osasuna in Pamplona (3-2) in February, he said: ‘We’ve made too many mistakes. I didn’t know how to answer the
questions before they were asked. I failed. I didn’t do my job well enough.’
    But in fact Pep had one trick left up his sleeve. He followed Johan Cruyff’s example by employing reverse psychology in admitting publicly that Barcelona were ‘not going to win this
league’. It had the desired affect. Players, suspicious that the manager was thinking of leaving them, wanted to show that they were still up for the challenge, still hungry. Barcelona clawed
back some ground on Madrid, getting to within four points of their rivals but it was too little too late. Defeat to their bitter rivals at the Camp Nou in May effectively handed the title to
Mourinho and the old enemy.
    There were uncharacteristic complaints about the referee from Pep in various press conferences during the last few months of theseason: a search for excuses that revealed
how Guardiola was perhaps losing his focus.
    Pep struggled to accept a fact of life: that after a period of unprecedented success (thirteen titles in his first three years with the first team), there must inevitably be a slump. If you win
all the time, there’s less desire to carry on winning. He tried to prevent this inevitable cycle by putting in longer shifts and making huge sacrifices. Even taking care of himself dropped
down his list of priorities,