Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography by Guillem Balagué Page B

whom he had forged a close friendship. ‘Do you
know a lawyer? I’m going to need one,’ he asked Manel. His friend went to see him the next day and he expected to find the footballer depressed, in need of a hug, and he had already
prepared some reassuring words; but when he arrived, he found Pep to be his usual self: stoic, pensive, obsessive. Guardiola had been up all night, researching every other incident similar to the
situation he now found himself in: reading the legal arguments and poring over case studies. Pep threw himself into finding a solution, rather than rolling over and accepting his fate. Hewas going to fight, and he wasn’t just going to leave it in the hands of the lawyers. In typical fashion, Pep was taking this personally and he was determined to be in control of
his destiny rather than leave it to others to decide his fate.
    Despite Pep’s determination to fight back, there were always going to be moments that would test his resolve, and Manel Estiarte was there to support him and help him avoid sinking into
despair, as Pep himself explains in the introduction to
All My Brothers
, the former water polo player’s autobiography: ‘For seven years I simply maintained that I had never
done anything wrong. From the first day when someone pointed me out and told me “Guardiola is a bad person”, you were on my side and stayed with me. When these things happen to people,
they don’t forget. It was you and your blessed luck that pressed that button on teletext and showed me the way to go so that, seven years later, the person who had pointed the finger at me
would change his mind and would say that “Guardiola is not a bad person”, that I was a good person. Yes, it was fate, I’m sure it was, but you believed in me and that’s why
I was lucky. You brought me luck. Much needed luck. That good fortune is a gift, the best title that I have ever won in my sporting career. I will never achieve another quite as important, I can
promise you. I held myself in too high esteem to take substances that could do me harm.’
    What, you may be wondering, did teletext have to do with any of this ... ? Pep Guardiola is referring to a call he received from his friend Estiarte one Sunday, months after the Italian National
Olympic Committee had announced the positive result in the nandrolone test. Pep was dozing on the couch when Manel called, shouting down the line, excited. Estiarte went on to explain that on
Italian teletext he had accidentally stumbled upon a story referring to a new discovery related to positive testing in nandrolone cases. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had ruled that a result
of less than two nanogrammes per millilitre of urine sample was an insufficient quantity to indicate substance abuse, because, they had now discovered, the human body is capable of producing up to
the nine nanogrammes per millilitre they had found in his body (in contrast, the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was found to have twothousand nanogrammes per millilitre). It was
a coincidental yet key moment, part of a long judicial process that was a test of Pep’s mental strength.
    ‘I am convinced I will win,’ Pep said many times during that process to the Italian press. He was hit with a four-month suspension, but from the moment that the National Olympic
Committee sentenced him, Guardiola launched a legal battle that went on until he proved his innocence. He never accepted the allegations, nor any consequent sanction. He even said ‘The
Italian justice system cannot look me in the eyes. I am innocent.’
    In May 2005, the Tribunal of Brescia fined him €2,000 and sentenced him to seven months’ imprisonment. The verdict was suspended because he had no criminal record but it was a
tremendous setback for Guardiola. ‘Do you think I need an illegal substance to play against Piacenza?’ he repeated to everyone.
    For Pep, this was an issue related to human values, truth and lies. They were accusing