CARABAO CUP FINAL SPECIAL
Guardiola eyes more City cheer
Pep Guardiola allowed himself a beer as he enjoyed tapas in Madrid the day after Manchester City’s greatest Champions League night.
It was not just victory in the firstleg of the last-16 tie away to Real Madrid that was worth celebrating but, even more so, the timing of it. As Guardiola (below) ate with his assistant Manuel Estiarte, City’s director of football Txiki Begiristain and club ambassador Mike Summerbee before returning to Manchester, it felt like there was some relief, some returning belief after what has been a difficult two weeks since the Uefa ban was announced.
It means City go into tomorrow’s Carabao Cup final against Aston Villa in a more relaxed state. Had they lost in Madrid – and they were 1-0 down – then it would have felt like the walls were closing in on them and on Guardiola.
The tie against Madrid is not over, far from it, as Guardiola stressed yesterday, but the pressure has been building to such an extent that those close to him have felt the “mood” around the club after Uefa’s announcement on Feb 14 was becoming an issue. They needed to win, and win again tomorrow, to retain the Carabao Cup and, therefore, claim it for three successive seasons. There has even been a feeling that maybe some of the faith in Guardiola had ebbed away, that the dropoff in the Premier League results, falling 22 points behind Liverpool and the trepidation of facing Real in the Champions League, had led to even more questions being asked over his future amid the confusion of dealing with the prospect of being out of Europe for two years and the torrent of bad publicity.
“In the end, you need to win to shut them down and make them believe,” said a source close to Guardiola, and the past fortnight has felt, to borrow a phrase from Jurgen Klopp when he was unveiled as Liverpool manager in 2015, about turning “doubters to believers”. Or, as the source put it: “The news [of the ban] always put doubts in people who are not strong and believe in our ways of doing things.”
Given Guardiola’s achievements at City, and previously with Barcelona and Bayern Munich, that may come as a surprise, but he is not immune to what is going on around him. He is also aware of legacy and landmarks and it was interesting in his pre-match press conference that he constructed an argument as to how significant an achievement it would be to again retain the Carabao Cup.
“Since we won the Carabao Cup as our first title together, we have played 11 competitions,” he said. “If we win, we will have won eight. Eight out of 11 at this level is incredible. And it would be the last six domestic titles in a row if we beat Aston Villa.” Like Jose Mourinho, Guardiola counts the Community Shield as a “title” with the argument that if it did not matter then why play it? Plus, the “Super Cup”, the equivalent in Spain and Germany where he coached, is prestigious and although Guardiola knows the Premier League title has gone, this season he can still make history.
The Champions League is the greatest goal but, as with Mourinho, the League Cup was the first trophy Guardiola won in England and if he can retain it, if he can retain the FA Cup also, it would offset relinquishing the title.
Similarly, last season Guardiola endorsed City’s trumpeting of the domestic quadruple of Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup and Community Shield, just as the year before he was delighted they became the first team to win the Premier League by gaining 100 points.
Last November, at the Football Writers’ Association Northern Managers Awards dinner in Manchester, Guardiola remarked to Klopp that “maybe we can swap?”, with Liverpool taking the Premier League title and City the Champions League, and while he was joking, it is a trade he would accept – especially if he can add further trophies, such as the League Cup and FA Cup, and arguably be regarded as having had a more successful season than his rival.
In fact, in the League Cup under Guardiola, City have won 17 of the 19 games including penalty-shoots, with their only meaningful defeat coming when Manchester United knocked them out in that trophyless first season, while Wembley has become a second home. Since City’s first appearance at the new stadium in 2011, they have won 13 times, including four League Cup finals, and lost on three occasions, although never under Guardiola.
But, right now, it is about dealing with the present. It was always City’s plan to train at Atletico Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano stadium the day after the Real Madrid match, to enjoy a little of the winter sun, before returning to Manchester and step up their preparations to face Villa at Wembley.
It was probably also a relief to be outside the City environment and Guardiola smiled when asked about the “crazy season” so far with the Uefa ban, the Premier League investigation into the club’s finances, his own future and contract, even a bizarre story about someone allegedly hacking into his email account and trying to sell the information – and the developing coronavirus crisis.
“Well, a little bit, yeah,” Guardiola said. “Always there are many things off the pitch. Johan Cruyff told me once the problem with the managers at the big clubs is that 70 or 80 per cent is issues off the pitch and just 30 to 20 on the pitch. At the time I thought ‘he’s crazy’. But, again, it was true. We have to handle it, help the club and focus on what we love and what we believe we can do on the pitch.” It was a telling response. Maybe some of the “love” is back.