Pep Guardiola Calls Tiki-Taka 'Rubbish,' Admits That He Loathes All the Passing

The "tiki-taka" brand of pass-heavy football has been largely associated with Pep Guardiola, from his dominant tenure at Barcelona and now with Bavarian giants Bayern Munich. 

But in the recently released book on Guardiola, Pep Confidential: The Inside Story of Pep Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich, a passage reveals Guardiola expressing his extreme distaste for the scheme. 

In the book, per The Telegraph, Guardiola expresses his frustrations with a lethargic first half during a win over local rival Nurnberg. He felt as though players were over-passing simply for the sake of appeasing Guardiola's apparent favoured system:

"

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. 

"

A day later, he relayed a similar message to his players and shed light on the intention of all the passing: 

"

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. 

Don't believe what people say. Barca 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. 

"