Pep and Cruyff
How Guardiola and his mentor rewrote rules of English football
TO Johan Cruyff, the Premier League was the last bastion. That’s how he and his son Jordi would talk about England. And Pep Guardiola was part of those conversations.
Once a year, Johan Cruyff and Guardiola used to play golf and lunch at the El Bulli restaurant in Roses on the Costa Brava.
In these high-level football seminars English football was often on t he agenda. And Cruyff was adamant: Total Football would work in England.
‘ We spoke many times [ about this],’ said Guardiola. ‘In football, the pitch is the same length. He believed we can play the way we want to play… here (England), in China, everywhere.
‘It’s 11 against 11, the distances are almost the same, so it’s the way the player moves, with the ball, without the ball, that makes the difference.’
The Cruyff and Guardio la families have always been close. Jordi and Pep grew up together as teenagers before Jordi left for Manchester United.
Guardiola was Johan’s pivotal midfielder, his No 4, as he transformed the footballing culture at Barcelona, with teams playing possession football from the keeper to the centre forward, mirroring his great Holland team of the ’70s.
Johan would also be instrumental in using his influence to ensure Guardiola got the Barcelona job over Jose Mourinho in 2008.
But Guardiola says the great Dutchman, who died of cancer two years ago, was fascinated with English football.
‘We’d speak about Jordi playing here,’ said Guardiola. ‘He [Johan] was delighted with English football. He was a big, big fan. And we spoke about how the football was completely different, how tough.
‘He always said to me that before it was tougher than it is now because the situation [quality] of the pitches and that’s that why there were more long balls.’
Guardiola’s arrival here in 2016 would put Cruyff’s philosophy to the test. Could it penetrate the heartland of the long ball?
‘I thought it was a question of time,’ said Jordi, now at Maccabi Tel Aviv, where he has taken on roles as coach and sporting director over the past six years. ‘And it’s true you could think of England as t he last bastion. But now it is proven t hat playing passing football from the back, the press, being dynamic, keeping the ball even if it’s risky, is also a way to win. Guardiola has brought that now to England.’
But if there was a moment of maximum doubt in Guardiola, and by extension Cruyff, it came in December 2016 at the King Power Stadium, Leicester.
Jamie Vardy had run John Stones and Claudio Bravo ragged. City had gone 3-0 down in 20 minutes and lost 4-2. City had won just four of their last 15 games and a reporter had questioned the fact that they had not won a tackle in the opening 30 minutes. Guardiola puffed out his cheeks. ‘I’m not a coach for the tackles,’ he said. ‘ The second ball is a concept, it’s typical here in England where there are a lot of tackles. But I don’t train the tackles.’ There was bewilderment at that. It was felt Guardiola could not, or would not, adapt to the English game. And it looked as if the stark realities of the Premier League were finding him out.
Guardiola recalls the day. ‘Now it looks like I was right because we won [the league],’ he says. But he wishes to clarify what he meant.
‘Of course it’s necessary to win tackles,’ he says. ‘Tackling is a part of the game. But there are many, many subjects in football and I’m not focusing on tackles.’
Had he appreciated the amount of angst his answer caused?
‘I understood completely. That is cultural, because the way we play here is with more physicality and more long balls, which suggests and creates these kind of actions. It’s important. We spoke many times to win the high-level games, you have to win duels.
‘People think it’s just pass the ball, possession of the ball. No, no, no. We speak a lot about how we have to defend. But my concern was that we hadn’t lost against Leicester because we didn’t win the tackles. We didn’t win for other reasons.’
Jordi Cruyff insists that those early difficulties adapting were not a case of Guardiola being caught by surprise by England. ‘He’s a guy that almost over-studies.’
That said, some on Guardiola’s coaching team noted that there were specific challenges in England they had never faced.
Guardiola’ s team attack in numbers on the assumption that if they lose the ball they can win it back quickly, preferably in the opponent’s half.
But Leicester had the ability to win the ball back and launch an attack on City’s exposed defence in less than two seconds with a long ball and Vardy’s pace.
Even in Germany, football rarely switches that quickly.
The long ball is more effective in England partly because it is an art form in its own right, but also because referees allow forwards to get away with being more physical.
Guardiola had to find a solution and, of course, had the best part of £400 million to spend.
Even when he arrived, Guardiola’s assessment of the City squad was that it was far too old and the arrivals of John Stones, Leroy Sane, Gabriel Jesus, Bravo and Nolito hadn’t addressed the balance, especially as the last two players were expensive mistakes. It was only this season with the signings of full-backs Kyle Walker,
Benjamin Mendy and Danilo, an extra forward in Bernardo Silva and centre-half Aymeric Laporte in January that the squad began to look formidable.
‘ Last summer they saw what shortcomings they felt they had to be able to play the football they really wanted,’ said Jordi. ‘They signed the right players and now they have the right balance.’
It is not just the money. With Mendy injured, Guardiol ahas transformed Fabian Delph into a left back and promoted Oleksandr Zinchenko. But one player has stood out among the new arrivals.
The replacement of Bravo with Ederson in goal has brought a huge improvement defensively.
‘You need players who are comfortable on the ball and have courage to play,’ says Jordi. ‘And the vital one is the goalkeeper.
‘He has to be able to play from the back but also, nowadays, not only give a good pass from 10 or 20 metres but also 50 metres.
‘As a team you can say: “I’m going to give Man City the ball and just wait”. But you know that they will eventually find the space and that giving t hem t he ball will not increase your chances to win.
‘On the other hand you can say: “I’m going to try to press as high as I can and if they make a mistake and I steal the ball, then at least I’m close to their goal and I don’t have to run 80m to run to get there”.
‘But if they have a keeper who has the ability to give the ball not only to the right back but to the right winger with a great pass, you’re not sure which system to adopt.
‘Do you want to press forward with the risk of a long ball catching you out? Or risk that you give them the ball and they might never lose it? Ederson gives you both options.’
By some measures City have been more dominant than the Arsenal Invincibles who won 26 games in the 2003-04 season and scored 73 goals. City have won 29 and scored 98 goals. It was always thought that the pinnacle of Guardiola’s work would be the great Barcelona side he created between 2008 and 2012.
Yet Jordi Cruyff believes City could surpass that, for one reason.
‘This is not a team that wins due to one or two players. This is a team that is winning because of the philosophy and that’ s more special than a superstar.
‘Man City don’t have Cristiano Ronaldo or a Lionel Messi. So they are team performances. They have a lot of very good players, dynamic and athletic and good on the ball but you don’t have THAT player.
‘Even Bayern Munich, you would look at their squad and understand that they have a better squad than any other German team.
‘At Man City you cannot say they only have the best players. They really made a very good team with a clear philosophy, with clear ideas that a year to pump in.’
Guardiola might have needed a year’s run at it but ultimately Johan Cruyff would be proved right.
‘He’d be happy,’ says Guardiola. ‘And he would be happy watching us and watching t he Premier League right now.’
‘OTHERS HAVE SUPERSTARS BUT CITY HAVE A PHILOSOPHY. THAT MAKES THEM SPECIAL’