Why Pep Guardiola walks the talk

Even if Josep Guardiola bids adieu to managing a football team today itself, he won't be soon forgotten. In fact, he won't be forgotten ever, at least in Catalonia.
Simple statistics, in contrast to romance in sports, is now good enough for the rookie Barcelona manager to be considered among the greats.
On Wednesday night in Rome's Stadio Olympico, he was pitted against the beautiful game's most revered brain, Alex Ferguson.The Scot got into business even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is a hazy memory for most Man U 'fans'.
Even Fergie was clueless when faced with Pep's acumen. Perhaps, age made him cautious which saw United start off with Dimitar Berbatov and Carlos Tevez on the bench.
In the Blaugrana starting XI, Pep threw caution to the winds and went ahead with his three strikers and two puny attacking midfielders even though his back four apparently looked as fragile as the wafer-thin anorexic models on the ramp with little to show and nothing to hide.
Pep couldn't care less. He is just 38. He has already won the La Liga and Copa del Rey. He came to Rome with dreams ��� that a certain Johan Cruyff sold him in 1984 when he was a learner at La Masia. He followed it just as Joe Bradley, the American reporter, did in that William Wyler masterpeice ��� unabashed in passion.
The story goes like this: A Dutchman by birth and Catalan by choice was watching a practice game where a young skinny lad was playing on the right side of the midfield. Cruyff told Charly Rexach, the youth team manager, to move him to the middle in the second half. Little did that lad know then what a paradigm shift he had undergone. He grew up to anchor Cruyff's Dream Team in the first half of the nineties.
In Rome, Pep paid tribute to the Dutch maestro. He pushed Lionel Messi to the centre instead of the Argentine's favoured right flank. The shortest man on the Olympico turned out to have the longest shadow of the night. Well, Pep didn't have it all easy when president Joan Laporta promoted him to take charge of a listless Barcelona, who went trophyless the last three seasons.
Pessimists wrote him off immediately as Barca kicked their La Liga campaign with a loss to Numancia. Knives that were out took some time to be sheathed but Pep went on with his job of "pass, pass, pass" with a clutch of La Masia graduates.
Xavi Hernandez, who had a Pep poster in his room at La Masia, was the heartbeat that controlled the limbs named Iniesta, Messi, Eto, Henry and the likes. If the 6-2 thrashing of Real Madrid at the Bernabeu was the precursor of the fantasy, then Rome provided the fitting climax to the rise of Pep, a Catalan by birth, choice and passion. As a player, he draped the Catalan flag during celebrations and flaunted his love for the Catalan poet Miquel Marti Pol.
When Pep melted into Laporta's embrace after the dream match, the Blaugrana fans all over the world would have loved to chant an English bard's immortal lines: "Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow/ That I shall say goodnight till it be morrow." Or perhaps, forever!