In a rare, exclusive interview, the Manchester City manager talks about his former coach and mentor, a man who taught him to always ‘want more and more’

“He was unique, totally unique,” Pep Guardiola says of Johan Cruyff on a quiet Thursday afternoon in London. “Without him I wouldn’t be here. I know for sure this is why I am, right now, the manager of Manchester City and before that Bayern Munich and Barcelona.”

On a sofa tucked away in a Bloomsbury hotel, the intensity of Guardiola’s gaze sharpens the impact of these words about his former coach and mentor. “Before he came we didn’t have a cathedral of football, this beautiful church, at Barcelona. We needed something new. And now it is something that has lasted. It was built by one man, by Johan Cruyff, stone by stone. That’s why he was special.

“I would not be able to do what he did. You hear all these people saying: ‘Oh Pep, what a good manager he is.’ Forget about it. Cruyff was the best, by far. Creating something new is the difficult part. To make it and build it and get everyone to follow? Amazing. That’s why, when I was Barcelona manager, I went to see Johan many times. I made especially sure I went a lot in my first year when we won everything, absolutely everything.”

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At the end of that 2008-09 season, when Guardiola was 37 and after he had spent the previous year, his first as a coach, looking after their B team, Barcelona completed the treble of the Copa del Rey, La Liga and the Champions League – beating Manchester United 2-0 in the final. Guardiola’s reputation was sealed during that extraordinary managerial debut but he stresses: “I always went that season to see Johan to try to make him feel how grateful I was to him. Of course I wanted to talk to him about new ideas, but the main feeling I always had when I said goodbye was that he might feel how pleased I am and see how deep my gratitude goes.”

That same gratitude means Guardiola is attending the launch of Cruyff’s autobiography, which the Dutchman finished working on shortly before his death from cancer, at the age of 68, just over six months ago. It’s also the reason why Guardiola is willing to engage in a rare interview, during an afternoon when he and I will share a stage with Jordi Cruyff, Johan’s son and his Barcelona team-mate in the 1990s.

While his bond with Cruyff Sr grew into one of the strongest in European football, Guardiola is still amused by the fact that when he first played for Cruyff the Dutch master gave him a severe rollicking at half-time. “You were slower than my granny,” Cruyff told the teenage Guardiola. Repeating Cruyff’s insult makes him chuckle. “That’s true,” Guardiola says, “it really is.”

At the age of 18 in May 1989, did he accept Cruyff’s jibe in a light-hearted way? “No. I was in a bad way because it was my first friendly in the first team. It was in the summer against a team [Banyoles] in the third division. I wanted to play the second half and Cruyff said: ‘No.’ Just like that. I sat there and thought: ‘Never again will I play for the first team at Barcelona. It’s over.’

“I didn’t understand it then. This was how Johan Cruyff worked. He was demanding a lot, but when you got there, and you were in his team, he was an incredible protector. He would push and push you and then he would protect you. He was a master at handling players. He knew when you needed to be pushed or protected.”

It took Guardiola another 19 months before, finally, he made his La Liga debut for Barcelona. He speaks of the need he and other young players felt to make Cruyff notice them. “Every step you make he helps you realise why you are getting better. He teach me how I can get better. I am like this: ‘I want more and more.’ You can feel the desire in me to get better.

“This is not the same as being hungry to make it. We all feel that hunger in football. With Cruyff it was different. He deepened and changed the hunger so you became conscious of why you are getting better. It was often simple. He would shout at me: ‘Control with the left, control with the left!’ because in the beginning I only use my right foot. He made me use both feet. Even now I use this with my players.

“But he had such vision. That’s why I called him many times to get his thoughts when I had the idea of moving into coaching.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pep Guardiola during the launch of Johan Cruyff’s My Turn. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

In his book Cruyff recalls advising Guardiola that a good manager tells his chairman or president to stay out of the dressing room. Guardiola laughs. “Yes, he did. But at that time the Barcelona president was a great friend of Johan and so it wasn’t a problem. We also spoke about how to handle the team on and off the pitch. But we didn’t always talk about football. We spoke about ordinary life.”

I also talk to Guardiola about ordinary life after fate intervenes. A flight from Barcelona carrying Danny Cruyff, Johan’s wife of 48 years, has been delayed and so there is an unexpected 40 additional minutes with Guardiola before we start our formal engagements. This relaxed snapshot ends up being just as intriguing, at least to me, as any antipathy he might once have felt towards José Mourinho or his clinical jettisoning of Joe Hart.

As soon as Guardiola arrives, accompanied by his brother, Pere, the influential agent whose clients include Luis Suárez, it feels easy to chat to him. It helps that Guardiola breaks into a smile when I ask him how he travelled down from Manchester. “By train,” he says. “It’s perfect and the second time I’ve caught the train to London. I worked all the way and before I knew it I was in the heart of London.”

Guardiola talks enthusiastically about England, from the amount of sunshine he’s seen in Manchester – “I know the rain is coming but, so far, it’s been amazing” – to his affection for London, before remembering his rigorous sabbatical when he was between positions at Barcelona and Bayern Munich. The zeal with which Guardiola recalls “many hours of homework” while learning to speak German in New York merges into a lofty appreciation of the language. Guardiola is almost poetic in describing how, once you move beyond the harsh cadences a foreigner hears, “the beauty of German surprised me”.

I knew nothing about football before knowing Cruyff

I am surprised, in turn, by Guardiola. The publishers have arranged a couple of cars to take us to Waterstones but Guardiola looks out at a sunny October scene. “Why don’t we just walk there?” he says. This seems typical of Guardiola’s mood as we make the short walk to Tottenham Court Road, receiving a few wide-eyed stares from people wondering if a Pep Guardiola lookalike might be out for a stroll. There is a kind of freedom, Guardiola says, in an international week for a club manager, a time to breathe again.

He soon breathes fresh life into the legacy of the man he reveres when, at the conference, I ask him about his quote on the book’s beautiful Dutch‑orange cover: “I knew nothing about football before knowing Cruyff.”

Guardiola is suitably expansive. “I thought I knew about football but when I started to work with him a new world appeared in front of me. Not just me – but a whole generation of players. Johan helped us understand the game. Football is the most difficult game in the world because it is open and every situation is completely different and you have to make decisions minute by minute. But I was a lucky guy. I am sitting here now because I met him. If not for him it would not have been possible.”

The book is illuminating in revealing how, when he was 18 and the youngest member of Ajax’s first team, Cruyff discussed tactics with his coach, Rinus Michels. They became synonymous with Total Football. “I also did it with Johan when I was 18 and I didn’t know anything about Michels,” Guardiola points out. “But at 18 you are a student, you are a child, not just in terms of the tactics and the mental approach but how they teach you every single day. Johan was part of our training sessions. He was not sitting there. Johan loved formations and he played with us in the boxes, in the games.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pep Guardiola holds his medal aloft in front of Johan Cruyff after Barcelona’s European Cup win in 1992. Photograph: Mark Leech/Offside

I’ve heard that Cruyff, even as a coach, played beautifully on the training pitch. “Better than us,” Guardiola exclaims of himself and his fellow players in Barcelona’s Dream Team that won the club’s first European Cup at Wembley in 1992. “He was much, much better than us. He explained what we have to do and showed us how to do it. It was a masterclass every single training session, every single game, analysing why we play good or bad. It was like going to university every day.

“He was the most influential person in football history. He changed not one club. He changed two clubs – as a player and a coach. It’s impossible to find another guy like this. OK, he did it at Ajax and they won the European Cup when Michels was there – but the player was Johan. After that he was a coach there and then he came to Barcelona. It was a big club but it didn’t have a specific football culture. We had one Argentina coach who played an Argentinian style, then came a German coach who played a German style. But then Johan arrived and he said: ‘Guys, now we play this way.’

“When I was there you see seven‑year-old kids doing the same training session, with the same patterns, as the first team. He created something from nothing and you have to have a lot of charisma and personality. Everybody knows about football but you need the charisma to say: ‘You must go in that way,’ and everybody follows. That’s so difficult to find.”

When Cruyff first discussed tactics with him, and Guardiola was in his teens, was he intimidated? “Of course. I was scared. Really scared. It was so tough. I’m sorry, Jordi.”

He looks across at Cruyff’s son and they laugh again. “It was so tough, so demanding. But after he retired I met him as a coach myself and he was a grandfather. He was completely different. He was so kind and, like the book expresses so well, a person who lives for other people, he tries to help. He had his foundation when I went there. I felt he was happy.

“He was the most courageous coach and manager I ever met. When he smells the talent it doesn’t matter if the age is 16 or 17 because he believed in, what in Spain we call, the efecto mariposa [butterfly effect]. For him one good pass at the beginning could create absolutely everything.”

Cruyff loved mathematics because it helped him think in new ways about formations and finding space in football – just as other sports such as basketball and, in particular, baseball, opened his mind. Does Guardiola look closely at other sports? “I love it. I love golf. Basketball. All sports.” Did he watch the Ryder Cup? “Yeah. We are waiting to get our revenge in two years.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Johan Cruyff with Pep Guardiola at the ProAm Mallorca Classic golf tournament in October 2006. Photograph: Monserrat/Marca/Offside

Guardiola smiles just as easily when I point out that he made Cruyff’s all‑time Fantasy Football XI. “As normal,” he quips. Yet, in an imaginary attack led by Pelé and Maradona, Cruyff could not find space for Lionel Messi. “If it was me I would pick Messi,” Guardiola says. “But I spoke to Johan many times about Messi. You cannot imagine how he admired him, how he liked him, how he loved him.”

Cruyff writes in his book that his life had been so intense and fulfilled it felt as if he had lived through a hundred years. Does Guardiola believe people will still talk about the Dutchman’s influence on football in 50 years? “There is no doubt about that. People always talk about the best managers, talking about prizes, how many titles, but that’s a huge mistake. The best managers win lots of titles because we are at big clubs with big players. But it is about how they influence the new generation, how they influence their players. At Ajax Cruyff influenced players like [Marco] Van Basten, [Frank] Rijkaard and others. They became coaches and many players from Barcelona are coaches right now. The influence on all of us was, wow, outstanding, amazing, huge. It’s not comparable to anyone because he was special.”

Jordi Cruyff is visibly moved and, seeing his mother and sister in the audience, his voice cracks as he thanks his father’s ghostwriter, Jaap de Groot, and, “also, Pep. If my father could choose one person to sit beside him I am quite sure it would be Pep. I can assure you my father was a big fan of Barcelona but also of Bayern Munich and in these last years, if he could still watch football, I think he’s probably going to be a big Manchester City fan.”

I am not here to change the Premier League … my team is going to play the way I believe in

Pep and Jordi clasp hands like they have completed a circle that began all those years ago.

“It was emotional, yes,” Guardiola says 15 minutes later as, along with Pere, we head out the back entrance and walk along some side streets. Guardiola talks freely, asking about the Guardian, and the impoverished state of newspapers, as well as chatting about book-writing and my team, Arsenal. “A good choice,” he says, grinning.

There is just a little time left, back at the hotel, to ask if Cruyff’s lessons are still as pertinent in the frenetic whirlpool of the Premier League. “I am not here to change English football,” Guardiola says, shrugging. “I am not here to change the Premier League. But my team is going to play the way I believe in. I will try to get my players to play with the style and the ideas which come straight from Johan. Some people will say: ‘Wow, that’s nice.’ Others will say: ‘Ugh, that’s awful.’ But I am not here to change anyone else.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Guardiola with Danny Coster, the widow of Johan Cruyff, and Jordi Cruyff. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

Manchester City’s Premier League lead has been cut to a point, after their first defeat of the season last Sunday, away to Tottenham. Fierce battles await Guardiola against relentlessly pressing and fluid attacking teams in Spurs and Liverpool, moulded by their managers, Mauricio Pochettino and Jürgen Klopp respectively, alongside his resumed rivalry with a bitter old adversary in Mourinho and an ally of sorts in Arsène Wenger. City will also visit the Camp Nou to play Barcelona in the Champions League the week after next. Guardiola, at least today, appears serene and ready.

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Last season, running counter to the Cruyff-Guardiola philosophy that possession matters most, Leicester City found a different way to win the Premier League. They had much less possession than all their rivals. “This season, to be champions,” Guardiola says, “I need my team to have possession. You can lose with possession, but more likely you will lose with less possession. We must do what we believe. I believe in possession. I know everyone wants to copy the winner – but in football and sport no one wins for ever.”

As the light fades from streets that are clogged in the rush hour, all seems hushed and serene inside as Guardiola reflects one last time on “the beautiful cathedral” that Cruyff built. Does he yearn to build an equally lasting legacy? “Of course. My teams play football the way I believe it should be played but the basis comes from before, from my mentor, from Cruyff.”

Johan Cruyff’s My Turn (Macmillan) is available at bookshop.theguardian.com Find out more about The Cruyff Foundation