"Guardiola said to me: 'I never put a head on the ball, I have it to think about."

"He was kind of an auxiliary at the time. He trained like the others, the physical and technical part; the tactical side was commanded within the court as a player," Pepe said in an interview to the portal 'UOL Esporte'. The Brazilian commented that Guardiola "played, but already had the commitment of a coach".

"He spoke five languages in training and was my coach on the pitch. He was different. He played with me in Doha, but he analyzed the leagues of Germany, France, Spain, the Champions League, he was extremely detailed.

Pepe, now retired from football at the age of 84, pointed out that at the time he directed Guardiola, the Spaniard was always "restless" about tactical issues and asked the veteran coach a lot about Brazilian and South American football.

"Guardiola always talked a lot about Brazilian football with me. He really liked the extraordinary players that Brazil already had and talked a lot about tactics and the rehearsed moves he saw from the past," said Pepe, the second goalscorer in Santos' history after Pele.

He evoked the fact that Guardiola, now coach of Manchester City and a stellar Barcelona coach, went as far as to give him a complete tactical analysis of the 1970 Brazilian national team, which dazzled the world with its World Cup title in Mexico six months before Pep was born.

On anecdotes of his coexistence with Guardiola, who retired as a player in 2006 in Dorados de Sinaloa after his time in Catarí football until 2005, Pepe said the Santpedor-born player recognized his own failures, as well as his limitations in aerial football.

"He said to me: 'Don Pepe, I've never in my life put my head on a ball and it's not going to be here. I've got my head to think about'," Pepe recalled.

"I'm very happy when he says he learned a lot with 'Don Pepe'. And Guardiola learned, yes, from technical and tactical training with me, I'm sure of that. It's a privilege for him to say that and it makes me very happy," said the double champion with Brazil at the World Cup in Sweden in 1958 and Chile in 1962.