Former Barcelona star Cristian Tello opens up on Guardiola’s message, Messi and Barcelona’s golden era

Former Barcelona star Cristian Tello opens up on Guardiola’s message, Messi and Barcelona’s golden era Former Barcelona winger Cristian Tello has brought a 16-year professional career to an end, with his years at the club still standing out as one of the defining chapters of his time in football. The former winger came through the Barça academy, returned to the club after a spell at Espanyol and eventually broke into a first team packed with world-class talent.  His rise coincided with one of the most successful periods in the club’s history, giving him the chance to train and play alongside some of football’s greatest names. Guardiola recognised Tello’s potential Looking back, Tello believes Pep Guardiola was among the first to recognise that he had the ability to compete at that level. Tello’s pace and direct style allowed him to cause problems even in training, where he regularly faced established defenders. Those sessions helped convince Guardiola that the youngster possessed qualities he was yet to fully understand himself. “Guardiola took me aside and told me I wasn’t aware of the qualities I possessed,” he recalled, as per MARCA . “He’d say to me: ‘You don’t realise it’.” Cristian Tello has talked about his chat with Guardiola. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images) The former winger believes that fearless approach was central to his eventual breakthrough.  “I’ve always been like that; I think that was also what led me to make the leap up to the first team,” he explained. Tello rejects doubts over Barcelona’s golden era Tello was also asked about the Negreira case and the controversy surrounding Barcelona’s dominant years.  Having experienced the team from inside the dressing room, he admits it is difficult to see that period linked to the former vice-chairman of the Referees’ Technical Committee. “Yes, that always hurts,” he explains. Tello nevertheless remains convinced that Barcelona’s football was good enough to stand on its own, pointing to the quality he witnessed first-hand. “Everyone who watched football knows that you’ll never see a team in your lifetime that plays football the way that team did.” His defence was even more direct when addressing the suggestion that outside influence was required for Barcelona to succeed. Cristian Tello has defended Barcelona’s legacy. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images) “I don’t think we needed Negreira or anyone else to win those matches.” Tello also insists that the subject was never something he encountered inside the dressing room. “I’d never heard of Negreira in my life, nor is anyone ever talked about in a dressing room,” he states. Despite all this, the biggest privilege of Tello’s Barcelona career was sharing a dressing room with Lionel Messi.  Reflecting on those years, he highlighted the Argentine’s extraordinary ability to make the impossible look routine. “I’ll always cherish having been able to play alongside and enjoy watching the best player in the world up close – the best player in history, as he’s set to become.” Tello then summed up what made those experiences so special, stating, “Enjoying every day with a player like that – how effortlessly he made everything look, how he turned matches around, how he helped his teammates.”