COLUMN: The ex-Spain midfielder believes that
Luis
Enrique “deserves so much credit” for the job
he
has done at Camp Nou and predicts their
superior
fitness will see them to Berlin
Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique were two
different types of player, and they are different
characters off the field too. But as coaches they
are very similar and essentially they have the
same idea of how they want their teams to play.
Luis Enrique is a more adventurous guy than
Pep. He
went off to Australia to spend time surfing, he
has
competed in marathons and ironman contests.
He wants to experience everything and it’s the
same in football, which is why I think we will
see him in England at some point in his career.
From my playing days, when I played with and
against both men at Barcelona and in the
national team, what I most remember about
Luis Enrique was his ability to play in any
position. As for Guardiola, he was amazing.
When he was a teenager he played like a 30-
year-old for Johann Cruyff’s Barcelona Dream
Team.
Pep was impossible to dispossess – he was the
team’s
point of reference in midfield, the first man to
get the ball when it was played out of defence,
an amazing one- touch player. Before he even
got the ball he knew where he was going to pa
$$ it next, he had such a sense of awareness of
where his teammates were.
In his early career at Gijon, Luis Enrique was an
attacking player, then at Real Madrid (1991-96)
he played right- back, left-back, midfield,
anywhere. At Barcelona (1996-2004) he was
much more of an attacking player and I will
never forget his stepovers.
>
He was skilful, he could play with both feet, he
was
strong, aggressive and competitive at every
level and a very strong character on the pitch
and in the dressing room. That character
showed through nowhere more than in the
clasicos when he scored against Real Madrid.
The way he celebrated those goals showed how
pa$$ionate he was. Madrid didn’t like it, Luis
Enrique
loved it. When I look at him as a coach I see a
man who has learned a lot, and a man who
deserves so much credit for what he has done
this season. Barca are eight games away from a
treble and they have a really good chance of
getting it.
Luis Enrique will have taken a lot from that year
as coach of Roma (2011-12), when he had his
problems behind the scenes with the big-name
players like Francesco Totti and Vincenzo
Montella. You have to deal with players who
want to be in the team every game, and there
are maybe 24 of them. It’s never
straightforward.
He has had similar problems with Lionel Messi
this
season and there was a lot of talk about it a few
months ago, but you don’t hear so much now.
When he tried to rotate Messi it didn’t work.
They talked and they sorted out their
differences.
Your responsibility as a manager is to make a
better
team, and Luis Enrique has made the best team
I have seen in a long time. What’s more, they
are all pretty fit and at this stage of the season
that is a big bonus.
He got a lot of stick earlier in the season, people
were saying ‘he doesn’t know what he’s doing’
when he didn’t play the same starting XI for so
many matches. But he knows the club, he
knows the players, he knows what the fans
want and he knows exactly what he’s doing. He
was right to rotate and he now has the fittest
team in the Champions League.
Barcelona have the edge over Bayern in the
semi-finals and those injuries to Arjen Robben
and Robert
Lewandowski have tipped the balance.
In football terms the two coaches are similar.
Yes,
Barcelona have changed this season, and
Andres Iniesta is taking the ball a bit deeper.
But Luis Enrique and Guardiola have the same
philosophy. Both teams play with a high
percentage of possession, and if they lose the
ball they try to regain it as quickly as possible.
Stats based on La Liga, Copa del Rey an
>
Stats based on La Liga, Copa del Rey and
UEFA
Champions League matches
High intensity, high possession, don’t let the
other team settle – you see it perfectly with
Barca now. Pep is more or less trying to do at
Bayern what he did at Barcelona, in terms of
playing [truncated by WhatsApp]
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