HOW PEP SHAPED HIS CHAMPIONS
Circular dressing room, mandatory English, communal meals, local culture … Guardiola’s small details built a truly great team
WHEN Manchester City constructed a new circular dressing room at the Etihad last summer, a line from Mancunian poet Tony Walsh was inscribed around the wall above the players’ heads.
‘Some were born here, others drawn here but we all call it home.’
The words from the poem This is the Place, that Walsh read out at a vigil for the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing last May, struck a chord with Pep Guardiola, whose wife and two daughters, Valentina and Maria, were caught up in the atrocity at the Ariana Grande concert close to their city centre apartment.
Guardiola took his family back to the venue when it reopened with the We Are Manchester benefit concert in September at the invitation of Noel Gallagher.
By then, it had become part of the matchday ritual at City that the Oasis hit
Wonderwall was played as the squad walked into the dressing room before every game.
Guardiola felt the need to forge a stronger bond between his players and the club they represent. He wanted Walsh’s words and Gallagher’s music to inspire his players, to make them appreciate what City mean to their supporters.
It offers an insight into the mind of Guardiola that goes beyond the perception of a football obsessive and control freak who cannot see beyond the white lines of the pitch.
That reputation is well earned. The Spaniard’s attention to detail is like no other coach’s in world football.
When he took over in the summer of 2016, Guardiola called a meeting with ground staff and stipulated that the grass at the Etihad and training pitches at the City Football Academy should be exactly 19 millimetres, as it had been at Barcelona and Bayern.
He was persuaded to relent on that demand because the grass doesn’t grow as quickly in Manchester, so the surface at the stadium is now allowed to grow to up to 23 millimetres.
In the training ground itself, the wifi was switched off in parts of the firstteam building to encourage players to interact rather than disappear into their phones. For the same reason, Guardiola insisted on the more inclusive, round dressing-room when the Etihad was remodelled to incorporate the new Tunnel Club last summer.
Players’ diets were scrutinised. Those returning for pre-season overweight were made to train on their own.
The squad were instructed to dine together after games and often before training, with Guardiola’s former Barcelona nutritionist Silvia Tremoleda hired to oversee every aspect of the players’ food intake — even the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan and Kyle Walker, who employ private chefs.
Foreign players were told to learn English — Nicolas Otamendi and Aymeric Laporte are among those working towards their exams — so the manager could speak to his squad in one language, and the team were attired by Guardiola’s friends at fashion brand Dsquared2.
While that may give the impression of a coach more concerned with micro — not man — management, it is not necessarily the case.
After City crashed out of the FA Cup at League One underdogs Wigan in February, Guardiola gave them the day off to go paintballing.
A coach who won 21 trophies in seven years at Barcelona and Bayern Munich could have been forgiven for not getting carried away by lifting the Carabao Cup, but Guardiola organised a champagne reception for staff at the training ground following the team’s victory over Arsenal to thank them for helping him win his first trophy in England.
Now he has added the Premier League title, making up for a barren first season in England that led to some people questioning City’s faith in the Pep project.
The club never wavered. Guardiola’s relationship with City chief executive Ferran Soriano and director of football Txiki Begiristain is solid enough that
when the club walked away from deals for Alexis Sanchez and Riyad Mahrez in January, there was no grumbling from the coach.
In contrast, it’s said that City officials watched open-mouthed as Jose Mourinho delivered his ‘football heritage’ rant in the wake of Manchester United’s Champions League exit at the hands of Sevilla last month, having joked with Liverpool executives on the flight out to Switzerland for the quarter-final draw in Nyon that the front-row seats booked by United were empty.
City continued to entrust Guardiola with more than £450million in less than two years to rebuild the squad and mould it to the way he wants to play. He has brought in Ederson, Benjamin Mendy, Walker, Danilo, Laporte, Gundogan, Gabriel Jesus, Leroy Sane and Bernardo Silva, raising the standard and reducing the age of his squad. It says much for Guardiola’s ability that even senior stars like Sergio Aguero, David Silva and De Bruyne have taken their games to a new level.
The younger ones have benefited too. Raheem Sterling describes how the manager told him to stop controlling the ball on the outside of his foot because it slows him down. The England winger has scored 22 goals this season, double his previous best.
Guardiola has been criticised for sticking to his high-pressing game plan too rigidly in recent weeks, but there is no doubt how well it has served City over the course of the season.
When he spoke to his players during the half-time interval at Huddersfield in November, they were facing their first league defeat of the season. The message was simple. Stick to the plan, even if it means losing the game. It will pay off in the long run.
For the first time in nearly 23 years, City overturned a half-time deficit to win away in the Premier League. The night United were outclassed at Old Trafford it was interesting to think back to City’s friendly with them in Houston last July when they were well beaten and Ederson blundered on his debut.
‘There were some very good things,’ said an upbeat Guardiola afterwards. ‘We’re going to grow up.’
No one, not even Guardiola himself, could have imagined just how quickly.