Quotes from Guillem Balagué

It is important in football, as in any walk of life, to appear calm in times of crisis. To hide weaknesses. Pep told them with conviction that they were on the right path.

There was certainly an improvement and any dissent or unrest was external – in the media and on radio phone-ins – rather than inside the dressing room. Some reactionary pundits even called for Pep's head.

What makes you grow is defeat, making mistakes. It is what keeps you alert. When you win you think: "Great, we've won.

Rijkaard and Ten Cate made the perfect double act; the ultimate good cop/bad cop routine, but without Henk banging his fist on the table, Rijkaard's nice guy routine led to chaos.

Rijkaard was aware of the stars' behaviour, but indulged them, ever the optimist that the players were mature and responsible enough to know when to draw the line. It was a mistake. And, by the middle of the 2006–07 season that started poorly in Monaco, it was a trend far too late to reverse as Barcelona's results and their performances reflected the breakdown in discipline.

You could play the ball with advantage not only because of the pass, but because of your positioning on the pitch and even the way your body was placed, for instance.

Secondly, you should be able to control the ball with one touch. If you needed another one, you were not one of the best players, just a good one. If you needed an extra touch, you were playing badly.

Failure is when a player does not have a good training session, when the coach relaxes and stops caring, when the team doesn't care either about whatever is going on,' Manel Estiarte said.

Thirdly – and crucial for Pep's position as the midfielder in front of the back four – he had to dispatch the ball to the wingers to make the pitch bigger, wider, to create spaces all over the pitch.

Regarding positional play, he insisted on making sure the player stayed in his corresponding area, especially when the ball was lost.

The coach sat down with president Laporta, Beguiristain and Estiarte in the suite of the hotel in which the team were staying in the United States for a pre-season tour. He explained that if the club could ignore the ruling and let Messi go to the Olympics, the long-term gain outweighed the short-term loss: it would allow him to get the best out of Messi.

It is better for a player to lose the ball when he is dribbling, feeling over-confident, than for a blunder, a mistake due to being scared of getting it wrong.

He jokes about only wanting to see the restaurants, but it is all about learning . . . about new cultures, and how to then incorporate those cultures into his coaching.

You get the player, based on what we need, and I will make it work,' has always been his take on signings.