Manuel Pellegrini: Threat of being fired drives me, says Manchester City manager

As Manchester City seek to take a giant stride in the Champions League on Tuesday night, a new book sheds light on their Chilean manager’s generosity and thirst for knowledge. Pete Jenson reports

Manuel Pellegrini (GETTY IMAGES)

Manuel Pellegrini has admitted to being driven on by the constant speculation about his future, in a new book about his 27 years in management.

In The Pellegrini Method, published this week in Chile, there is praise for his attacking style from Yaya Touré and Pep Guardiola and for his man-management from Pablo Zabaleta.

And when the book’s author, Francisco Sagredo, suggests: “It can’t be nice being constantly on the point of being fired,” Pellegrini responds: “On the contrary. For me it is very important that the possibility exists that they can get rid of me. What I fear most when I leave this profession is that void of not having those permanent demands placed upon me.”

City can take a huge stride towards the Champions League last 16 against Sevilla and the club’s 62-year-old manager is back in Spain, where he first crossed swords with Guardiola, the man now constantly linked to his job.

The Bayern Munich coach is one of 68 interviewed contributors to The Pellegrini Method. He says: “I’m a follower of Pellegrini and his football philosophy. You could tell a team was coached by Pellegrini just by watching it play.” And dismissing his excellent record against the Chilean, he says: “That makes no difference. You can tell that a rival coach is good when you have to think hard about how to go about beating him. That always happens with Pellegrini.”

I had private lessons with a singing teacher

&#13; <p>Manuel Pellegrini</p>&#13;

Touré, the Manchester City captain, is another to praise the City manager, saying: “He is a coach who likes to be on the attack permanently. Last season, against Aston Villa, we were ahead at half-time but we were not playing well and when we got to the dressing room he told us that it was useless training all week on attacking if we were going to defend as soon as we got in front. I love playing this way because it is what I learnt at Barcelona. He is the ideal coach for me. He tells me to enjoy myself by always looking to go forward. With [former City manager Roberto] Mancini that was more difficult.”

The book tracks Pellegrini through almost three decades of management, with players from one former club, San Lorenzo, recalling how one year he bought an apartment in Buenos Aires and raffled it in the dressing room. Leandro Alvarez, a recently promoted youth-team player, was the lucky winner.

At Villarreal he raffled a car. “I was one ticket from winning it,” remembers defender Javi Venta. “Everyone had to draw out a piece of paper with a player’s name on it until the last player left in the hat won. In the end it was won by Edmilson.”

Current Manchester City full-back Zabaleta praised Pellegrini’s man-management, recounting the story of how he was dropped last season after he became a father for the first time.

“It had been weeks since I last slept well. I was like the walking dead in training. Pellegrini told me that being a father was the best thing that was going to happen to me in my life and he understood because the same thing had happened to him as a player. But that he was going to take me out of the team because I didn’t look 100 per cent. What could I say? I had been the first one to notice!”

The book reveals how Pellegrini’s friends back in Chile use their WhatsApp group to remonstrate with him over some of his decisions. One friend tells the book’s author: “Sometimes he would take the time to explain a decision but other times he would get bored with us. Last year I picked him out for picking Bacary Sagna ahead of Zabaleta and he replied: ‘Ah, what do you know?’”

Pellegrini names three Manchester City players as being among the top six talents he has coached, putting Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Touré alongside Raul, Juan Roman Riquelme and Cristiano Ronaldo.

And he pays tribute to Ronaldo’s extreme professionalism, telling the story of how he once fined him for arriving late for a training session at Real Madrid that had been changed from 7pm to 6pm. A club official had been given the job of calling all the players but he could not find Ronaldo. It was left to Pepe to inform his team-mate but he forgot.

“We had a system of fines for those who arrived late,” he recalls. “Ronaldo used to arrive an hour before training and he did so on this day to find we were starting the session. I fined him and he went crazy, but not because of the fine – because he couldn’t bear the idea that he had been late. It just never entered into his mind set. Alongside Raul, he is one of the most professional players I have ever coached.”

The book also sheds light on the more private side of Pellegrini and portrays a compulsive learner, forever striving to improve himself and even taking voice lessons while at Villarreal.

“I had private lessons with a singing teacher,” he tells Sagredo. “My idea wasn’t to learn to sing, obviously, but I wanted to learn how to look after the voice and project it better.”

When asked by the author if he was aware of any other coach in the world who does that, Pellegrini replies: “I’ve no idea, but for me it was nothing out of the ordinary. It’s just a case of looking for different tools to make me better prepared to do my job. I wasn’t using my voice properly, so I looked for someone who could help me.”