Q: Where are we coming from and where is football heading to?
A: I think that the role of the coaches is sometimes excessive. We've improved so much from a physical point of view that right now it's very difficult to dribble your opponent. Except for Messi or Neymar or the Luis Suarez's out there, even Cristiano and Bale have problems dribbling their opponents, because physically we're at a level that can't be improved. We train with a chip on our chests, we adjust distances, count kilometers, measure top speed... It's impossible to be better prepared physically.
Q: Don't you think that Guardiola's Barca is responsible for making that task even more difficult, because the spaces have become much smaller?
A: Exactly. The tactical aspect has also been exploited. Guardiola focused on the details. He controlled everything. I had never trained for a defensive throw in. He would tell you where you had to be even for that. The opponent would get a throw in and we'd all be perfectly positioned. And the guy on the other team would sometimes say: "Damn, what happened? I don't even have space for this throw in!" Pep controlled everything. What happened? Some wanted to copy that a bit, like Low who studied us and then did what he did. And others went for the opposite of this, which is Simeone. He has talented players like Koke defending deep, closing down spaces, intending to unblock superiorities. Football has exploded in the physical and tactical aspects. Right now what we have left to exploit is the technical one, understanding why things happen, how to attack. That's what talent is! And it isn't developed enough. Because in football you have more Simeones than Guardiolas. You can see that in the Premier League. How many teams play like Pep's? Three? Four? How many play like Simeone or allow you to dominate them? 70%. It's the same in La Liga. And then you get the excuse of: "Oh, but I can't compete with City or Barcelona." But they do the same thing against Leganes too!
Q: Do you think the same thing happens in La Liga as in the Premier League?
A: It's more pronounced this year in the Premier League because Guardiola went to dominate games and the others say "I'll forget about the ball and stay deep." And you don't exploit dominating the game or being more daring. If I'm at a small team and play against Barca what I want to do is take the ball from them. The question is: how do I defend against Barca? Like Paco Jemez: I press high. If you let them play Ter Stegen passes to Piqué, Piqué drives the ball up into midfield and for me that's already a predictable death.
Q: Teams that control the ball often found themselves stuck because then you have 22 players in 50 meters. How do you solve that contradiction?
A: We were already training for that in 2008. With Luis Enrique too: playing against two lines of four, with someone marking your pivot, you try to look for spaces fast by switching the ball to the other side of the pitch, not passing horizontally but switching play to our second or third line. Barca knows what it's going to face. We work on the positional play, against nine defenders, where our central defender has to move up with the ball at his feet and break the lines, always in small spaces working on keeping the ball, positional exercises training how you control the ball with your first touch so that you can get away from your marker in two or three meters...
Q: But how many players are there who can play in such small spaces?
A: You can train it! But what do others do? Mourinho's Madrid played directly to the space behind our back line. He told them not to pass the ball. Play fast and they had an outlet with Di Maria, Cristiano, Benzema... Now they have Bale and others. They didn't want to play football.
Q: With City we're seeing something strange: they're beating record without a fixed striker and without normal midfielders. De Bruyne is a winger and Silva is a "mediapunta". How has Guardiola turned them into central midfielders?
A: De Bruyne and Silva have adapted to those positions because they're the type of player that knows how to profile himself to receive the ball in 360 degrees, they turn to every side, see the whole pitch. Because with Guardiola's style of play you need pure wingers, like Sane. Sane would find it difficult to play inside because ge couldn't do that small turn that give you space, the turn that Messi, Iniesta, Silva, De Bruyne or Giindogan have... Even Sterling has it if he's forced to do it. Sane doesn't. He needs space. Like Bale: if you play them inside they won't be as good. They have to play on the wing, dribble. Like Cristiano. He has more difficulty playing in the middle because he doesn't profile his body the right way. De Bruyne and Silva are spectacular. It seems as if we're just now discovering Silva.
Q: You talk about stimulating creativity. How do you do that?
A: With rondos! People still think that's just something we do for fun. No! It's an incredible exercise. You use both feet, you look towards the second line, you pass inside, you attract your opponent and then when he's close to you, pam!, you pass it to the other side... It's endless. It's an exercise that allows infinite implementations. For example: seven against two, five against two (in this case it's already harder to find an escape). Nine against two is more "fun". Or you can have a big rondo with three in the middle: two press and the other one covers potential passing lines so you have to find the space, think where you can find the ball... It forces you to look around you, find the free player. At Barca we understand football as a space-time concept. Who dominates that? Busquets, Messi, Iniesta: they're masters of space-time. They always know what to do when they're surrounded. Then you have midfielders like Casemiro who don't understand that. But at the same time, Busquets could never do the cover work that Casemiro does when the game is heads or tails.
Q: Heads or tails?
A: Yes: Madrid's team breaks in the middle, seven go forward and then Casemiro is left alone to cover all that space. That's what I mean by heads or tails. Busquets can't do that because even I'm faster than him. Casemiro is very fast. But he has difficulties with everything else because he hasn't worked on the other aspects. He has other characteristics, he's more defensive, recovers the ball more, covers more ground, makes runs into attack... But he doesn't dominate space time. If he had worked on that when he was 12, 13, 15 he would have developed it. Why can Kroos do it? Because in Germany they work on it. Why can Thiago do it? Because he was developed at Barca. The surprising thing is when you find someone like Cazorla that has that ability. I asked him: "How did you learn this?" "No, no, I was trained at Aviles and then at Oviedo and then I went to Recre..." There are natural talents. I ask myself: How didn't Barca sign him? He already knows the style. Silva, Kroos, Modric. How has Barca not signed them? They're players that obviously have the right profile. I keep looking for players that could go to Barca. Like Philipp Lahm. He saw everything!
Q: With Lahm and Alaba Guardiola started this trend of the full backs coming inside and ending up as a "mediapunta".
A: In the end it's associative football. Guardiola is always working to find where the free space is. For example, if you play against Levante and you see that their wingers mark your full backs, like Bielsa did basically, then you move your fullback inside. If the winger follows him then that clears the passing line from your center back to your winger. Because many times the fullback is in the way of that pass. If you move your fullback inside one of two things happen: either the opposition winger leaves him alone and that gives you a free man inside or he follows him and you've opened a passing lane to the winger. Space-time. For the opposition this is impossible to control, because you mark one and another one is left free. You create superiority.
Q: These positional changes for the players that we saw with Guardiola's Bayern or Tuchel's BVB confuse the opponent, but they also mean more physical and mental exhaustion for your own team. How do you avoid that?
A: I don't see it that way. This isn't just about switching a position. We have to talk about understanding the game. You don't teach the player to switch positions. You teach him to understand the game. A Qatari player doesn't understand the why. I drive up the pitch with the ball at my feet and he moves towards me. "What are you doing? We're going to hit each other!" He comes within a meter of me and I say "If Maradona and Pele played within a meter of each other I would be the best defender in the world against them." Have them play 15 meters apart. What do you do? Who do you cover? They can pass the ball to each other without failing for 3 days. Cruyff talked about the accordion: ppening the pitch, understanding where the free space is. If Iniesta is here then I can't be in the same space. In the right moment, if he's under pressure, then I can provide an outlet for him. Barca's advantage is that it has worked on these things for years.
Q: Barca's idea was the last one to transform football. What's the next paradigm going to be?
A: Talent always wins against physicality. The day that won't happen it's going to be shifty because the game will be boring. And because I think that talent always comes out on top, what we need to exploit is that: making the players understand why. Why must you stand there? Why do you have to come towards the ball in the right moment? Why is your teammate keeping the opposition central defenders in place so that you have space to receive the ball? Things don't just happen. Let's remember the 2-6. Why could Messi receive the ball alone between the lines? Because Henry and Eto'o were playing in the space between the central defender and the full back. And the central defender couldn't move up towards Leo because he was thinking that they would exploit the space behind his back. Gago and Lass were marking me and Iniesta and Leo was alone. This is how you get superiority. This is what Guardiola and his assistants analyzed so well. Luis Enrique too. You analyze where you can achieve these superiority, where you can play the passes...
Q: Right now the word "recurso" (option) is very fashionable now. Some coaches take teams that know how to control the ball and play in the opposition half and they say that they need to add another option. And they do what Luis Enrique did or what Lopetegui is going and after they score they take advantage of that and play the ball in their own half and then exploit the space left by the opposition with long passes. Supposedly that gives you more security. But is it not more dangerous to mix two "languages" this way?
A: Luis Enrique did that really well. But I don't like it. Imagine that you're the national team and you're 1-0 against Portugal in the World Cup. Spain says: instead of pressing high and exposing space behind out back line, we're going to take a step back like Luis Aragones did. So they come and press you and then you can play a direct pass to Diego Costa... or Luis Suarez in the Barca version. Neymar too. We used to counter this way at Barca. Luis Enrique would invite the opposition to press high so that we could counter. We scored that way against Atletico Madrid in the Cup. Suarez played a pass to himself and went past Gimenez. Or that nutmeg against David Luis in the PSG game. And we were all in our own half. This was unthinkable for Guardiola's Barca. It depends on the coach. I don't like it. Even winning 1-0 in the 89th minute I want the ball and the place where I feel most comfortable is in the opposition half, in control of the ball, attacking.
Q: But besides your personal feelings about it, if you have Iniesta, Silva and Isco on the pitch, isn't it more pragmatic to maintain high pressure? When Spain or Barca take a step back aren't they risking losing control and confidence?
A: I ask myself: how do I defend better? Give me the ball. The opponent can't attack you. He first has to recover the ball. And when he does that he's 70-80 meters from your goal, so the conclusion is clear. The safest thing is to have the ball in the opposition half. That's why I don't understand the coaches that say "we're going to play in our own half." Right now the only team in the world that tries to dominate the game until the last minute, regardless of the score, is City.
Q: Teams that stay in their own half have to make longer runs in order to go forward and backward. Doesn't that affect players like Busquets, Iniesta or Isco?
A: Yes, but the coaches that do that prepare their midfielders and wide players for longer runs. With Luis Enrique we were doing a different type of physical work for longer efforts. With Paco Seirul-lo we did series of 10-15 meters sprints. That was specific for the midfielders and the central defenders had their own work with longer runs. Simeone prepares his players for sitting back. They have very hard preseasons because the team has to be defending all the time, closing down spaces, covering for each other... The coach focuses on how he wants to play: from a physical, technical and psychological point of view. Simeone has convinced players like Koke to do something that I would find extremely difficult... And they enjoy it. I saw it from our bench: Cholo is happy on the sideline when his team doesn't have the ball. Guardiola focused on his football: short runs, a spark, a move and playing the ball from the back. Specific circuits for playing in 30 meters. Simeone prepares his player for playing in bigger spaces.
