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In their most recent meeting against Arsenal, in a virtual English Premier League title decider, it all went like clockwork for the team that claimed four of the last five seasons under the same manager.
Kevin De Bruyne would hit his stride to get the first of four goals. But after five seconds of celebrating the goal, Guardiola would be seen fuming on Ederson. With Arsenal press closing in near his box, the City goalkeeper had opted for John Stones as the passing option rather than Rodri or Ruben Dias, who looked in a better position to eliminate incoming resistance. Even though Stones had managed to set free Haaland, who set up De Bruyne for the goal, the Spanish manager couldn’t let go of the passing error that’d led to the goal. A perfectionist wouldn’t.
One can’t simply deduce what Guardiola must’ve said to Ederson. Even angry, the manager in him can commend a player while talking sense to them. Joshua Kimmich knows. During his time as the Bayern manager, Guardiola had picked aside the German international for an on field dressing down after a 0-0 Der Klassiker in 2016. However, it wasn’t a bashing at all. “I told him he’s one of the best centre-backs in the world,” Guardiola would share at the time. “He’s got absolutely everything.”
Etihad Stadium, Manchester, Britain – May 6, 2023 Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola Action Images via Reuters
In an interview with The Guardian, Kimmich explained further, “I played at centre-back and five minutes before the end Xabi Alonso went out and Medhi Benatia came in. Benatia went into my position in defence and I took Xabi’s place in midfield. But I was still thinking like a centre-back. I was playing too deep and Medhi and I were nearly in the same position.”
“Pep shouted at me in the game to move up but I didn’t recognise why. So he told me exactly what he meant before I left the field. In the first moments I was surprised. But, when you know Pep, this is what you get.”
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Knowing Pep is exactly what one must do to understand the fidgeting at the touchline and the dressing room when his players commit what he views as cardinal sins. Flip the pages back to the early days of his senior professional playing football career at Barcelona. One Johan Cruyff had spotted him training for Barca’s B team and thought he’d do well with the big boys. Ronald Koeman would be handed the responsibility to be his ‘tutor’ and make sure that he learned the ‘dutch style of play’, introduced by Cruyff as an identity of the Catalan club. Guardiola would be an inquisitive student.
“From the very beginning he was asking me everything about the Ajax youth academy. He would say, ‘Ronald, how do they train? What do they do? How do they play’?” Koeman would share with Daily Mail in 2011.
“He wanted to know about the Dutch school of football. More than any other player he wanted to know about one-touch football, about positional play. He had an insatiable hunger for information and a massive interest in the game. We spent hours talking football. There were months when I spent more time with Pep than with my own wife!” No one, nothing would come in the way of Guardiola and football. The results as a manager spoke volumes as the Spaniard went on to win a second Champions League final with Barca only a week after Koeman spilled the secrets. A resounding 3-1 besting of Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United at English football’s fabled home of the sport.
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In his first managerial job, Guardiola blew the proverbial roof off with 14 trophies across his four season tenure that saw what most sane people claim as the best Barcelona team ever. Philosophising the Tiki Taka style of play that was very much the heartbeat of the two-Euros-one-World-Cup winning Spanish national team as well. In the 2010 World Cup final, six of the starting eleven played club for Barcelona. Four years later, six of the starting eleven for Germany against Argentina played club for Bayern Munich, now coached by Pep Guardiola.
Dominating the opposition with heaps of possession and eye-catching style of play continued. Guardiola and Bayern were dominating German football like anything but he just wouldn’t stop being the inquisitive self.
There’s the meeting between the Spaniard and Thomas Tuchel at the Schumann’s Bar in Munich. One that the then Bayern sporting director Michael Reschke was witness to. One he termed “like watching two grandmasters of chess, Fischer vs Spassky, locked in a battle of wits. Or Cicero and Socrates, discussing football philosophy.”
In a chat with The Athletic, Reschke revealed of the night Guardiola shared a table with the German manager who enthralled him the most alongside Jurgen Klopp. For four hours, the duo were so into a conversation of intricate details that no one, from the waiters to Reschke, who was seated alongside dared to intervene. “I like to talk about football myself quite a lot but I don’t think I got a word in,” he recalled. “I was a mere spectator. They were speaking in a mixture of German and English, and didn’t use any scientific terms at all, but it was still hard to keep up with them at times. They could recall dozens and dozens of specific situations from ages ago and talked through how things might have panned out differently if there had been any changes. It was all about actions and reactions.”
All about resources?
Guardiola’s juju has been constantly under the scanner on those counts. The depth on the bench hasn’t stayed hidden. Julian Alvarez was the breakout centre forward at the 2022 World Cup. At his club though, the Argentinean has remained overwhelmingly second favorite to an Erling Haaland. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The signings alone during the Guardiola era have crossed the one billion threshold.
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Is it really that simple. Buy the best players and win trophies? “I f***ing hate listening to stuff like that,” former Arsenal and England player Ian Wright blasted on his pod. “Listening to people on radio stations say, ‘I could’ve won the league with that Barcelona side.’ You still have to put a team together and get them to work. The levels they (Manchester City) have got to, in what they’ve achieved in the five-six years, it’s phenomenal.”
The former Barcelona man has preferred system over individuals, much to the delight of Cruyff who believed “winning is an important thing, but to have your own style, to have people copy you, to admire you, that is the greatest gift.”
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Playing an attacking eleven without a designated striker, moving a midfielder up as an invisible second striker, shuffling a wing back in the midfield, glorifying the false nine role, Guardiola has continued to make the best players at his disposal adapt to his and the modern game’s needs.
Jack Grealish, the most expensive deal in British football history, would lend light to his manager’s non-negotiable beliefs of collective over individualism after the Premier League win last season.
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“I don’t get nervous with fans and all but he actually gets me nervous….My dad says to me you need to get at the back post. When people say, ‘I want Jack to attack more’…but because Pep doesn’t want you to lose the ball, I’m so in my head thinking I can’t lose this. I’ve got to play a pass.”
Final frontier in England
Lionel Messi put it this way for ESPN, “Guardiola did football a lot of harm because he made it look so easy and so simple that everyone wanted to copy him.”
Success has followed him from Spain to Germany and now England. Nine trophies, four of them league titles, aren’t bad at all in the seven seasons so far, with two more on the horizon. One of which, he has labelled as “the trophy we want and my period here will not be complete if we don’t win it.”
City’s inability to win the premier competition in European club football has been associated by many with Guardiola’s overthinking on the big eves. Keeping just the one holding midfielder against an all-out attack minded Monaco side. Starting with a 3-5-2 to match Lyon’s formation in the 2020 quarterfinal to stop their wide forwards but in turn reducing his side’s creative output. Not opting for either of Rodri or Fernandinho, who’d played in 60 off City’s 61 games in the next season either individually or together, in the starting eleven of the final against Chelsea. There’s downsides to being a 24 x 7 thinker.
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As City prepare for the Madrid challenge in the semis for a second year in a row, the Spaniard would do well by not forgetting what had happened last year. With seconds left in the regulation time, Guardiola had taken off Riyad Mahrez, City’s lone goal scorer in the second leg only to see the champions overcome a 5-3 deficit on aggregate.
The tinkerman has kept himself busy from the start of the season. City let go of Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko to Arsenal and Raheem Sterling to Chelsea last summer. Haaland has proven to be the missing piece in the puzzle, injecting more directness in City’s attacking venture in what has been a Premier League record goal scoring season. Five goals away from becoming a record Champions League goal scoring season. The perennial possession monsters have been ruthless off the ball as well. City have been able to regain the ball more than any other team that featured in the final eight of the Champions League this season (7.8 per 90 minutes, according to FBref).
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It was the loss of possession, lack of creating chances up front, and constant bombardment of Madrid players in their box that did Guardiola and Co in the dying embers of last year’s semifinal. Has their master-mind finally thought this through?
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“The way we played last season [against Madrid] was really good in both games but it was not enough. We are not here for revenge, it is just another opportunity. As much as we are here, one day we will get it. One day we will reach the final and win it,” Guardiola said on the eve of the first leg in Madrid. Who knows what’s going on in the nerd’s head.
