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You are here: Home Health & Fitness Fitness & Sports Home-grown coach put the Pep back in Barcelona

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04/06/2009Home-grown coach put the Pep back in Barcelona

How the Catalan born-and-bred coach led his team to the historic treble triumph.

Barcelona took a huge gamble in hiring the 38-year-old Pep Guardiola last season to restore the club's fortunes after two years without any silverware under Franck Rijkaard.

But the club's former captain, a Catalan born-and-bred, has come up trumps in his debut season, surpassing all expectations as Barcelona won the Spanish league, Kings Cup and Champions League treble.

The stunning 2-0 win over Manchester United in Rome last Wednesday also means he has joined the illustrious club of men to win the Champions League as a player and manager, after taking what was then the European Cup in 1992 with Barca.

"We're very, very happy, we're delirious and I'd like to congratulate the whole club,” said Guardiola, who became the youngest ever Champions League winning coach.

"We're not the best team in history but we have played the best season in history. To win three titles, and how we did it."

AFP PHOTO / LLUIS GENE.
FC Barcelona's coach Pep Guardiola signs autographs at a press conference on 29 May 2009 at Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona

To motivate his players for the Champions League final in Rome, El Pais reported Guardiola showed them clips from the film "Gladiator" just minutes before the match.
The film, which won five Oscars in 2000, stars Russell Crowe as a Roman general, known as "the Spaniard", who is betrayed and enslaved but who rises through the ranks of the gladiatorial arena to avenge the murder of his family.

The video, put together especially for Guardiola by a journalist friend, also shows some of best moves by each of the players during the season.

It concludes with a message from Barcelona's sponsor that appears on the screen:
"We are the centre of the field, we have accuracy, we have effort, we are attackers who are defending, we are defenders who are attacking, we have speed, we have the respect of our adversaries, we are each goal that we score, we are the ones who are always looking for the opponent's goal. WE ARE ONE."
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