Pep Guardiola has revealed that he resents his Barcelona team being associated with the tiki-taka style of playing football. The now Bayern Munich manager declared his hatred of tiki taka to journalist Marti Perarnau, who penned a book on the work of the Spaniard.
I loathe all that passing for the sake of it, all that tiki-taka. It's so much rubbish and has no purpose. You have to pass the ball with a clear intention, with the aim of making it into the opposition's goal. It's not about passing for the sake of it.
Be yourselves. You need to dig into your own DNA. I hate tiki-taka. Tiki-taka means passing the ball for the sake of it, with no clear intention. And it's pointless.
The brilliant Barca team Guardiola managed in the late noughties are often credited with pioneering the one-touch passing style that the media dubbed "tiki-taka". However, Guardiola believes that the press are wrong for claiming that any of his teams played this type of football. He claims that Barcelona's high-volume passing game always had a point to it.
Don't believe what people say. Barça didn't do tiki-taka! It's completely made up! Don't believe a word of it! In all team sports, the secret is to overload one side of the pitch so that the opponent must tilt its own defence to cope. You overload on one side and draw them in so that they leave the other side weak.
And when we've done all that, we attack and score from the other side. That's why you have to pass the ball, but only if you're doing it with a clear intention. It's only to overload the opponent, to draw them in and then to hit them with the sucker punch. That's what our game needs to be. Nothing to do with tiki-taka.
It's safe to say Pep isn't happy with being tarnished with the tiki-taka brush.
Hat tip: Telegraph
