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Jan 25, 2024

Pep Guardiola is both tactical genius and egomaniac

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Pep Guardiola could have handed a team sheet to the referee an hour before kick-off.

Instead he effectively gave him a betting slip - one that spelt out the biggest gamble of his career.

In possession of the best squad in European football, and facing a team who had lost three of their previous four games, the only thing Guardiola had to do on this, the night of the 2021 Champions League final, was hold his nerve.

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Instead he picked a team that couldn't even hold their shape.

Then again how could they? Not for the first time, the preeminent tactician of his generation had gone bat crazy on a big European night.

Facing a Thomas Tuchel led Chelsea, Guardiola selected Raheem Sterling. Nothing controversial about that - the winger being an excellent player.

But that was not the issue. Rather it was who and what he had left out. No Rodri, no Fernandinho, no central defensive midfielder.

That's a bit like U2 headlining Croke Park without Larry Mullan. For sure, no one buys their ticket to hear a drummer, or, in a football context, see a defensive pivot. But without one, the whole operation can fall apart.

And it did that night for City.

Just as it fell apart for them a year earlier at the quarter-final stage against Lyon; just like it did in the 2019 quarters against Spurs; just like it did last year against Real Madrid.

Each time the tie was lost in the 30 seconds it took Guardiola to write out his starting XI.

You may remember the Spurs tie for Sterling's disallowed goal in the second-leg rather than the decision by Guardiola to bench Leroy Sane and Kevin De Bruyne until the penultimate minute of the White Hart Lane game.

But the selection decision by the City manager was as critical as the offside one delivered by VAR.

As for the Lyon defeat, that stemmed from the switch to a 3-4-2-1 formation with Eric Garcia lining out in the middle of his defence; whereas last year's Real Madrid tie saw him react too late to their second leg onslaught, three goals arriving in a six minute spell, Fernandinho not being subbed on until the 85th minute.

It has become the ultimate irony, that this great tactical innovator, the one who drew up concepts such as a false nine, inverted wingers, the five second rule, the 15 pass rule - has ended up trying to be too smart for his own good.

That's what ego can do to a manager.

Guardiola knows he's good because his managerial CV tells him so: 10 league titles won in three different countries; two Champions Leagues; three Super Cups; three FIFA World Cups; 14 domestic Cups.

He knows he's good because experiments he has tried before have worked.

You can go back to Barcelona, his first job, when he instructed each player to stay in a specific area of the field and wait for the ball to come to them. When some strayed from their designated boundaries, they paid the price, Thierry Henry famously subbed off against Sporting Lisbon, despite scoring in that game.

"Under (Johann) Cruyff the Barca formula was invented," said Jorge Valdano, "under Pep a method was put behind the formula."

That method entailed the players learning how to hunt in packs, both offensively and defensively, spatial awareness a key focus of the manager's demands, the idea being that it's easier to pass the ball over short distances as opposed to longer ones, and even easier to reclaim possession if the ball is lost.

"Facing them was a such a nightmare," said the former Bayer Leverkusen boss, Robin Dutt, "because they kept the ball for so long. By the time you got it back, our whole team had a pulse rate of 200."

With trophies coming on the back of his innovations, Guardiola's confidence soared, and three successive titles in Germany with Bayern Munich only served to enhance his self-belief.

By now he was being lauded for his tactical shrewdness, shifting Thomas Muller from midfield to attack, Phillip Lahm from right-back to midfield. Phrases such as a false nine and an inverted full-back were credited to him, as if he was an inventor of a new way of playing.

Yet he wasn't really. As Graeme Souness noted last week, Kenny Dalglish was a false nine before the term had ever been coined; while Lahm's youth team coach, Roman Grill, was the first to use the World Cup winner as a midfielder.

Nonetheless success swells a man's head. Bayern kept winning - although not in Europe - and Guardiola's willingness to undergo a study in self-effacement kept being postponed.

"The team learned a lot and improved tactically (under my management)," he said before leaving for Manchester City.

There, the experiments continued.

And it must be added, they continued to work.

Remember City were a mess when he arrived, finishing fourth with just 66 points in their final pre-Pep season, their starting X1 loaded with golden oldies: Demichellis (35), Kompany (30), Zabaleta (31), Kolarov (30), Fernandinho (31), Silva (30), Toure (33), Navas (30).

In his first couple of seasons he alternated between a 4-2-3-1 shape and 4-3-3, immediately realising he had to bring in new personnel to execute his game-plan, lowering the age profile of the side with some buying and selling, altering the side's style in the process.

Again we saw inverted full-backs, the fluidity of his ideas allowing Kyle Walker to shift from right-back to centre-back on the occasions when the then left-back, Fabian Delph, moved into midfield.

His purchase of Ederson dissuaded teams from pressing high as the goalkeeper had the passing range to ping long, accurate passes either into the City midfield or to his touchline-hugging wingers, Leroy Sane or Sterling.

As the years merged into one another, and teams found ways to restrict City's new-look, Guardiola changed tact again, switching to 4-4-2 the year after Liverpool beat them to the league, De Bruyne reappearing as a false nine.

Again, in time, when Erling Haaland became available on the market, he evolved again, content in the knowledge that he had a big No9 to pose a threat in behind, facilitating De Bruyne's relocation to a deeper role.

All these changes worked.

You only have to look at City's trophy cabinet to realise that as well as the fact the man's brain is to football what Einstein's was to physics.

But old Albert knew his limitations, when to switch off and have some downtime.

Pep's problem - particularly on European nights - has been to keep tinkering, to believe he always has to outthink the opposition.

But sometimes you don't need to. Now and then if you trust in the system and the players you’ve spent a season working with, then that can be enough.

And so if, for once in Europe, he keeps things simple, City have a Real chance tonight.

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