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Keep his counsel?

- Obituary: P. N. Haksar, Independent.co.uk, December 2, 1998.

2. Guardiola puts both heart and soul but also appendix, ligaments, red-blood cells and hair follicles into his work.

Just ask his players. I asked Leo Messi last week, “What keeps you from relaxing or dropping your standards?” He said: “Pep does, he’s on top of every one of us, every minute of every training or playing day.”

Xavi, in the same situation, responded: “Pep’s almost got a sickness for football, he never stops, he never draws breath he just works, and studies, and researches and then he’s on the players like a hungry hawk.”

Guardiola’s partner, Cristina, is so long-suffering that she had to allow him to accept the first negotiations to become Barca coach in 2008 a couple of hours after she’d given birth to their third daughter, Valentina.

Doting parents beaming down at the gurgling youngster, a knock at the door of the hospital room, and then-Barca president Joan Laporta sticking his head into the gap: “Nice work on the little one, but can we have our guy back now please Mrs. Guardiola?” is not far from what happened.

Barca regularly travels to away games on the same day, unheard of in La Liga, because Guardiola stresses that the players don’t need to be sitting bored overnight in a strange hotel.