Iniesta (3): "Guardiola is an example for me"

In an interview with Catalan sports paper El Mundo Deportivo, Barcelona midfielder Andrés Iniesta talked about the season so far.


(you can read the previous parts here)


At the start of the season you went to see Guardiola to gave him your support. He was going through a bad time?
Since the moment I was informed that he would be the new coach, I felt an incredible motivation. With him, I have a lot of confidence and I feel extremely well. He knows that he has the support of myself and the whole team. If we succeed in playing how he wants us to play, in the end we will win what we have to win.

Why is Guardiola so special to you?
For me he's a real example, not only as a player but also as a person, as a symbol, as someone who lives for Barcelona. I think he has to be one of the most important persons for this club. I hope he will have a great time as a coach because that would mean that we achieve what we want to achieve.

You're good performances this season are partly because of the new coach?
I'm sure of this because Guardiola gives me a lot of confidence. Having the confidence of the coach is essential and a great motivation. I'm very happy to have him as my coach. He wants us to show unity, dedication, that we do things properly. He's thinking about football 24 hours a day and I don't think anyone knows more about the game than he does. As a player he already showed that and this has only been growing since then. He'll be important for the team this season.

Things are going fine in the Champions League.
If we'll win the home game against Basel, we'll almost sure go through as group winners and that says a lot. If we can do that, the first part of the Champions League will already be behind us, which could be important now the Spanish cup will also start and we'll have a full calendar until Christmas. That's why it will be important to win that game.

When people now talk about the Rijkaard era, it seems you didn't work at all.
I think people only remember the last part of a period that generally was good but was disastrous at the end. We still felt the impact at the start of this season. Little by little people are again getting more involved and the team is giving reasons to be positive. Rijkaard and Guardiola have nothing in common, but that doesn't mean that Frank would be better or worse than Pep. With Frank, we always worked at the same level and maybe that was the problem, that you should change things if they don't work, but the past is the past.

If you always worked at the same level with Rijkaard, this means that the players were to blame?
I believe more in the player than in the coach. The first years, we won trophies, later we didn't and I think the players are mostly responsible for that and that we didn't do what we had to do. That was our main mistake. If you have to work, you have to work. Every player should know what he needs. Even if you only train one hour, you won't have any problem during the matches if you do it intensely. But if you train one hour without doing what you need to do, you will get weaker in some aspect.

What happened last year had an influence on the start of this season?
It's normal that people don't trust the team after the terrible times we went through. I felt hurt by all that, so for the people who came to the stadium or watched it on television, it could only have been worse. Because of that, I think it's normal that less people came to see the games. But we know that this will change if we play well and give everything from the start.


This was the third and last part of this interview.

You can read the previous parts here:
Iniesta (1): "I prefer to play on the left"
Iniesta (2): "I need to improve my scoring"