Pep Guardiola said goodbye to Manchester City last weekend. He spent a decade in England, won 20 titles and, once again, changed football. The legacy for his club will be a new trophy room. There were 25 cups in more than 130 years, seven of which were in the second division. With Pep came six Premier Leagues, a Champions League, World Cup and a variety of cups and super cups.
The Catalan coach made a traditional club, but without a history of dominance, become a super winner. For the rest of the football world, Pep once again had a huge impact, influencing the way of attacking and defending across the planet. This is the great virtue that sets him apart from others.
Even if Carlo Ancelotti has more titles, in different countries, or Alex Ferguson spent more than 20 years at the helm of Manchester United, or Zidane won three Champions Leagues in a row with Real Madrid, none of them had the impact to influence the game that Guardiola manages to create. Since his first job at Barcelona, potentiating the “tiki-taka”, which he learned as a player in the Johan Cruyff era at the helm of the club.
As time went by, around the world, teams began to want to have defenders who knew how to play, goalkeepers good with their feet, false 9s and other elements invented or redefined by Pep.
Today we talk about “positional play” to describe this football of passing, well-defined positions and precision of player movements in each sector of the field. With the “Guardiola school” also came the counter-school. From José Mourinho’s super-defensive football at the beginning of the 2010s to Jürgen Klopp’s super-pressing and intensity at Liverpool at the end of the same decade.
Whether in England, Spain or Brazil, teams started to copy one or another way of playing and the criticisms that all teams in the world play the same and that football has become something standardized and mechanical are fair.
These criticisms are just not fair to Guardiola himself. He didn’t make his team’s goalkeeper play wrong and cause a defeat in the 14th round of the Brasilierão. He didn’t make the Belgian, Japanese or US leagues look the same, full of teams moving the ball from one side to the other.
Pep only coached three teams. He can only be “blamed” for the way Barcelona, Bayern or Manchester City play. Everything else is the consequence generated by the coach who most revolutionized football in at least 50 years. Why weren’t Ancelotti, Ferguson or Zidane’s teams copied? Because the “how” matters in football. Guardiola won and lost, but he always showed the world what the sport’s next step would be.
Last week, PSG coach Luís Enrique — also trained as a Barcelona player and later coach of the club — said that one day Guardiola will position the defenders on top of the crossbar and all the coaches will start to copy him, because he will probably be right.
During his time at Manchester City, Pep made his team play with four defenders, using one of them as a midfielder. Played without attackers. He played with four attackers. He praised Haaland in games in which the Norwegian touched the ball 20 times while his teammates exchanged 720 passes.
Guardiola will return to work soon. Maybe on a national team. And the doubt I have is what will be the next step that football will take. He’s probably the one who will tell us.
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