YOU HAVE TO BUY INTO PEP
Much is made of Pep’s Barça-ball style, yet he has clearly adapted to Bayern’s strengths out wide, encouraging crossfield balls for Robben and Ribery. “I’m not some kind of Taliban; I’m not totally inflexible,” he says in Pep Confidential. “I’m happy to evolve. But please don’t ask me to do something I don’t believe in.” And if you don’t do what he believes in, you’ll find yourself discarded.
Guardiola will not bend over backwards to accommodate a player who won’t adapt to his requirements in the same way that Pep adapts for the team. Javi Martinez has evolved to great effect; ditto captain Lahm and star man Ribery. “I love you, Pep,” the French winger told him in 2014. “I’m just a street kid, but you will always be in my heart.”
Yet he struggles to manage players with a singularity of personality. Samuel Eto’o, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Mario Mandzukic have all lasted just one season under Guardiola. The latter’s sulking when out of the team was a particular annoyance to
him. It’s no coincidence that these three are driven centre-forwards with more than a dash of ego, who define themselves by goals.
“Guardiola disappointed me because he didn’t treat me with respect; it was twice as good when Jupp Heynckes was there,” said Mandzukic, who joined Atletico Madrid at the end of the Spaniard’s first season at the Allianz Arena. Eto’o and Ibra have also cited a lack respect.
Guardiola’s preference for a false nine may not help, but Robert Lewandowski’s 48 goals in his first 75 Bayern games is proof that if you’re willing to adapt, Pep will change his tactics for you.
On the day Douglas Costa arrived at Bayern from Shakhtar Donetsk, his new coach asked him: “Are you ready to open your mind and learn how to play football?” Frequently used in an unfamiliar left-wing position, the Brazilian had scored five goals and assisted a further 12 by the winter break. He’d learned well. One wonders whether Premier League stars, used to prioritising physique over tactical mastery, will be able to follow suit. Guardiola’s belief in his own ideas, however well founded, can be his biggest downfall. When Guardiola introduced 3-4-3 to Barcelona in 2011-12, with mixed results, he wanted to challenge a team that had already won everything. Unfamiliar with the system, Los Cules lost the league to Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid and exited the Champions League to Chelsea in the last four.
When presented with two possible options, he always chooses the more attacking one (“Pep would rather die going forward than stay alive defending,” Thierry Henry once said of his former coach). There is much to admire in this. But in Bayern’s biggest games in the last two and a half seasons, the coach’s master plan went badly wrong.
First, there was the 2014 Champions League semi-final. Trailing 1-0 from the first leg, a 4-2-3-1-shaped Bayern side surrended midfield superiority of the ball in favour of four out-and-out-attackers (Robben, Ribery and Thomas Muller pushed high, with Mandzukic as centre-forward) and lost 4-0 at home to Real Madrid.
Twelve months on, question marks were again raised over Guardiola’s daring after he selected a back three (Boateng, Rafinha, Medhi Benatia) to face Barcelona’s fearsome attacking trident of Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez. “Pep Guardiola is probably the only coach in world football who would do this away at the Nou Camp,” said commentator Gary Neville. “Everyone else would be thinking: ‘How do we double-up on them, or protect, or screen?’”
After 20 minutes of a Barça barrage, he had to change to a back four. Bayern lost 3-0, and the tie was effectively over. So often does the risk-reward football work, he possibly gets too clever for his own good. This would see him come unstuck in the Premier League furnace.