Andres Iniesta talks about the 'essence' that helped him become one of the game's greatest midfielders and the coaches who influenced him.
There is a romance to the way Andres Iniesta enjoyed a career that, if it were a video game, would have been completed several times over.
Ask Iniesta how he always saw the seemingly impossible pass, or wriggled out of the tightest situations, and he takes you back three decades and almost 7,000 miles to the instincts honed on the makeshift pitches of his hometown of Fuentealbilla. "The connection to that environment and who you are and what type of person you are brings you to being a certain type of player.
"I've had different coaches. I started with Louis van Gaal and then there was Guardiola, Luis Enrique and Ernesto Valverde. All coaches teach you something and you can learn something from all coaches. Maybe there are times I played less, but that experience enriched me too. He highlights the relentless energy of Marcelo Bielsa's sides and the challenge of breaking down Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid in El Clasico fixtures.
It was Barcelona, though, who inspired coaches around the world to adopt the principles that made them so successful - the tiki-taka, the suffocating press, the focus on technically gifted players at a time when others were scouting for strong, powerful athletes. Iniesta is reluctant to criticise a club he still holds dear and, once his playing career comes to a close, the Nou Camp is a place he longs to return to.
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