Even if City finish out of top four, Pep will still be a winner
Forget the gung-ho garbage about how being second is just first of the losers...
THIS is utterly at odds with the prevailing X Factor ideology in English football, which is t hat failure to win the league should earn the manager of a big club the sack immediately, but nobody will sway me from the opinion that Pep Guardiola has had a good first season as the manager of Manchester City.
This is a luxury view, of course. It is the view of someone who has not poured hundreds of millions of pounds into the club over the last nine years. So, sure, it may be that Sheik Mansour and his cohorts have a rather less relaxed attitude towards City’s early exit from the Champions League in Europe and failure to challenge championselect Chelsea at home.
But even if City lose to Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal this afternoon in the battle of football’s two great purists, even if they lose to Antonio Conte’s Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday too and even if they drop out of the top four in the process, yes, Guardiola will still have made a promising start to his time in the English game.
Maybe this is blinkered but I admire him more as a manager now than I did when he arrived in England. Many have criticised him because he has refused to compromise but I love the fact that he has refused to compromise. I love the fact he has stayed true to his philosophy.
It has made for awkward moments. It has made for occasional embarrassment. And those who thought City would waltz away with the title as soon as he was tempted away from Bayern Munich, having been courted for so long, may be feeling bitterly disappointed.
But Guardiola had the will to stay true to what he believed: perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. The will and the strength not to waver. To pursue the long-term goal. How rare that is in modern football where fear is the driver of so many decisions.
But , right from the start, Guardiola has set out his vision of football and how it should be played and he has not wavered from it. He is probably the least pragmatic coach English football has ever seen. Playing the percentages is a phrase he has never heard.
He did not have the personnel to deliver his vision but he pressed on with his plan just the same. Some of the player she inherited from Manuel Pellegrini simply were not good enough but Guardiola’s answer was not to dilute his philosophy but to try to make them better. That is why it makes me laugh when people criticise Guardiola for exiling Joe Hart and say it was a mistake. I’m a big fan of Hart but he did not fit into Guardiola’s vision of the way he wanted his team to play. It was his choice and he has stood by it. It might not have worked but it was not a mistake. There is a difference.
Claudio Bravo was not the right replacement, that is true. But this was always going to be a season of adjustment for the former Barcelona boss. There is no point in pretending it has been easy but it has not been a failure either.
It has been a season of laying foundations and teaching new players his style. It has been a season of adapting to the different mores of the Premier League, of assessing which players are good enough and which are not. Plenty are not.
But it has also been a season when we have been given glimpses of what lies ahead. City’s mesmerising victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford last September held out the promise of the kind of bewitching football that characterised his time at the Nou Camp. It came only in brief glimpses thereafter but much of City’s football has still been a joy to watch. The 5-3 victory over Monaco at the Etihad in February was a study in football anarchy, when City disregarded their defensive frailties and outscored their opponents in one of the most thrilling games in Champions League history. Their 1-1 draw with Liverpool last month was one of the best attacking games of the season. Their forward line of Raheem Sterling, Leroy Sane and Sergio Aguero has been the most exciting in the division — and that is before you mention t he contributions of David Silva and the promise of Gabriel Jesus. And at the heart of t heir struggling defence, Guardiola has stuck with John Stones and watched a young player continue to show the courage to try to play his way out of trouble. Stones has been pilloried for much of the season, most recently by Eric Cantona, but if he finally gets decent support from new fullbacks and a central defensive partner next season, we will see the full flowering of his talent.
It is not entirely the point but if you were to compare their first season sin Manchester, whose would you take — Jose Mourinho’s or Guardiola’s? They have both had much to recommend them, actually. They have both been building for next season. But for entertainment, there is only one winner.
Sure, Guardiola has been outshone by Antonio Conte, who has adapted more quickly and more pragmatically to his playing resources. But Guardiola is less pragmatic. He is different. Not worse. His record demands that he is given time. His record also suggests he will not get it wrong for long. And when he gets it right, City will be hard to stop.
The Premier League has become a monument to the age of instant gratification and in his own way, Guardiola has given us that. He has not delivered the Champions League or the Premier League but he has shown us hints of the team he will fashion and thrilling glimpses of the style he will play. For now, that is enough. Do not be brainwashed into believing all that gung-ho garbage about how being second is just the first of the losers. There are lots of different ways of being a winner in football.
When Guardiola and Wenger stand on the touch line at the Emirates today, some unfortunates will claim they are failures. For the rest of us, they are men who infuse football with great joy and panache. They deserve to be celebrated, not castigated by fools.