Gladiator movie inspires Barca to Roman conquest

TO motivate his players for the Champions League final in Rome, the Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola showed them clips from Ridley Scott’s epic ‘Gladiator’ just minutes before the match.

Barcelona beat Manchester United 2-0 in a dazzling and attacking display in Rome’s Olympic stadium on Wednesday night.

Guardiola ended the pre-match warm-up session early to show the players a seven-minute video that included clips from the film Gladiator, the newspaper El Pais said.

The film, which won five Oscars in 2000, stars Russell Crowe as a Roman general, known as the Spaniard, who is betrayed and enslaved but who rises through the ranks of the gladiatorial arena to avenge the murder of his family.

The video, put together especially for Guardiola by a journalist friend, also shows some of the best moves by each of the players during the season.

It concludes with a message from Barcelona’s sponsor that appears on the screen:

“We are the centre of the field, we have accuracy, we have effort, we are attackers who are defending, we are defenders who are attacking, we have speed, we have the respect of our adversaries, we are each goal that we score, we are the ones who are always looking for the opponent’s goal. WE ARE ONE.”

El Pais said that when the video ended and the lights came up, “some players were crying and their shouts indicated that the aim had been achieved.”

It said Guardiola then let them enter the stadium without saying another word.