Barcelona had lost the LaLiga crown to bitter rival Real Madrid for two successive seasons in 2007 and 2008 under head coach Frank Rijkaard, and club president Joan Laporta’s next step to take the team back to the top was to gamble on an untested Josep ‘Pep’ Guardiola.
Guardiola, who came through the fabled La Masia (Barca’s academy) and went on to play and then captain the first team, had just led the Barcelona B team back to the Segunda Division B (Spain’s third tier) by winning the Catalonia division in his first season as a coach.
According to Laporta, when he approached him about the job, Guardiola responded saying that he hadn’t the courage to hire him.” Laporta, though, was convinced that Guardiola would be the man to revive Barcelona while playing the Barca way. His decision was justified when the club won a historic treble in his maiden season and would go on to win LaLiga two more times and the Champions League again in his four years among other trophies there. “We chose a philosophy, not a brand,” Laporta would later say.
