Pep possesses something special with Man City
Manchester City are flying at the top of the EPL, their football dazzling rival clubs, writes Alyson Rudd.
THE classic scene for any film set in a school is when the new kid struts in wearing a leather jacket or daring make-up, chewing gum, looking three years older, and the pupils rush to be just like the mesmeric, cool arrival.
The English Premier League version has Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola winning but, crucially, winning in style and dominating possession as never before. Rival clubs are queuing up to be like the Spaniard. It may be going too far for their managers to adopt his tight bomber-jacket look, but they are certainly copying his football philosophy.
Possession is cool. Possession is popular. There is a marked desire among the big clubs to be in Pep’s gang and to sneer at those who are happy to chase the resultant shadows, or sit back and try to repel it. A form of snobbery has crept into the game alongside the scintillating patterns – and with it a sense of entitlement.
So far, it is fair to categorise this as the season of possession, with the bigger clubs hogging the ball as never before. The average possession among those teams who adopt this style has increased dramatically to 64.54 per cent. That it is Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and Liverpool who contribute to the statistic is not a surprise, but what is notable is how dramatic the shift – up from 61.53 per cent for the same four clubs last season – has been.
It is not as though the trend is for a gradual rise in possession. It fell to 57.79 per cent for the 2015-16 season and has been bobbing up and down at about the 58 per cent mark since analysis began in 2003. The change is Pepshaped. City broke records when Guardiola arrived last season, recording average possession at 64.93 per cent, and so far this campaign he has coached his players to produce it to a level of 72 per cent. ‘‘People said we couldn’t play the way we did in Barcelona in England, but it is possible and we did it,’’ Guardiola said after beating Manchester United at Old Trafford last Monday. ‘‘I knew that last season. Always I believed we could do it.’’ You can almost hear Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp and Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino jumping up and down, arms in the air, shouting: ‘Me too’.
Manchester United last led the way in possession under Louis van Gaal two years ago, but that was a season in which Leicester City showed how counter- attacking football could win the title. In that campaign Leicester recorded an average possession of 42.43 per cent, with only Sunderland and West Bromwich Albion having less of the ball than Claudio Ranieri’s team.
It felt like the death of keep-ball, but then along came Guardiola and his perfectionism. It is not just that he prefers possession-based football, but that he considers it morally correct. We have shifted to a world in which it is not enough to win if you are a big club, but you have to win in an aesthetic fashion.
It feels, rather strongly, as though Guardiola was prepared not to secure any silverware last season while he was still finetuning the team to play the game properly. One year ago City lost 4-2 to Leicester, despite of having 78 per cent of the ball. There was a marked lack of pragmatism from Guardiola, who scoffed at the idea that his side needed to improve their tackling.
Tackling, he said, was not something he coaches. It was assumed that he would be chastened by his failure to embrace the physicality of the English game, that if City were to win anything under the former Barcelona coach, they would have to weave the art of tackling into their tapestry of ambitious passing. Yet, after City won at the King Power last month, Guardiola revealed he had not ceded one jot. ‘‘I don’t train tackles,’’ he repeated. ‘‘I train to keep the ball and defend as well as possible.’’
The Manchester derby was not only highly anticipated because the teams were at the top of the table, but also because of the clash of styles. United have dropped out of the possession mini-league under Jose Mourinho and he defiantly refused to buckle under pressure from those who bleated that it would be embarrassing for United, as the home team, to allow City to dictate.
In the end, United mustered only 35 per cent of possession and lost. Had Romelu Lukaku scored from close range near the end and secured a draw, Mourinho would have felt vindicated. Instead, it was left to Guardiola to beam, messianically, about the purity of it all. The good guys won. When they do not win, it is as though the opposition somehow cheated the system.
TIMES