Conversations about the future with Pep Guardiola and Fernando Trueba.

Things move pretty fast in Spain. After losing to Real Madrid and getting knocked out of the Champions League in one week, today we found out that this will be Pep’s last season with Barça for the foreseeable future. I’m posting this conversation between Pep and legendary Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba from last September simply because the future seems to be terribly present in the present. Enjoy.

Selected words of wisdom from Pep and Fernando:

1) Trueba: “You reached the future you had imagined when you were 25. How do you imagine your future now?

Pep: "Not a day goes by in which I don’t think ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’ I think whenever you’re in a position where you’re managing something, you have to think that if you want, the next day you can just walk away. I think I work best when I know I have the freedom to decide my own future.

2) Trueba: And for human beings in general: some age well, others less well. We all have our own rhythm: some people give their very best at 20, others at 80. There is no written rule.

3) Pep: It’s a game, nothing else. Know your opponent, and try to play better than him. The whole point is not to defeat your opponent and think 'yeah, we beat them.’ I never think that, I focus instead, during the game, on thinking if what I imagined the day before is happening on the pitch or not. If it is, then I’m completely fulfilled as a coach. If it isn’t, it’s because I was wrong about something and I have to understand the reasons why things are not going as I planned.

Trueba: Yes, but there’s no such thing as "things went wrong.” Things just happen the way they happen, you have to accept it… Directors usually say 'I’m going to direct a movie, let’s see if I can make the movie exactly as I imagine it in my mind.’ That movie is a dream, it doesn’t exist. What matters is not what you dream it will be, it’s the movie you actually MAKE… Try not to be to hung up on utopias. Utopias don’t exist… I’m not saying dreaming is wrong. But it’s also important to try to change reality for the better by bit by bit, realistically.

[posted by EB]