FROM PURIST TO PEP THE PRAGMATIST
Guardiola sacrificed finesse for fierceness, showing a side of him we didn’t know existed
PEP Guardiola has never lost consecutive home league matches. Not just at Manchester City; across his entire career. And while his detractors will insist this means nothing, given the clubs he has coached, anyone who understands the demands, even at an elite level, even with the finest players, will comprehend just how precious that record is.
Sir Alex Ferguson, for instance, lost back to back in 2001: 3-0 to Chelsea on December 1, 1-0 to West Ham a week later, and on three other occasions previously with Manchester United. Jurgen Klopp did so on three occasions at Borussia Dortmund, most recently in October 2014. Yet Guardiola? Never. Incredibly, we may have underestimated him.
For a record of that nature does not endure if the manager coaches just one idea. It does not exist without a measure of compromise. We picture Guardiola as this idealist, who cherishes only beauty and grace. His team loses at Chelsea because he refuses to kill Sarri-ball by devoting a player to Jorginho. He goes to Liverpool and plays his way against Klopp, even when the record shows that this method has faltered before.
Yet on Thursday night, English football saw a different side of the man, and his team. A side we did not know existed. Late in the game, when Guardiola was imploring his goalkeeper, Ederson, to kick long, to alleviate pressure and take time out of the game, this was a changed man. Has Guardiola bent, if only a little, to the physical demands of the English season? Or has this pragmatic side always been there, but has never needed to be used with Manchester City before?
Most certainly, Guardiola can alter his path. In his first season with Bayern Munich, he was dissatisfied after a 1-1 draw with Freiburg and another disappointment in the UEFA Super Cup against Chelsea, which his team won, but only on penalties.
He showed Munich’s players a video of them passing sideways, back and forth, across the defensive line. ‘This is tiki-taka,’ he told them, ‘and it is s***.’ The innovation was to place Phillip Lahm in midfield and focus on breaking opposition lines, rather than staying safely imprisoned by them. There followed a run of 16 wins and one draw in 17 games.
It is not as if Guardiola made permanent changes to Manchester City’s philosophy against Liverpool, but he sent his side out to fight in a way that had not been witnessed before. With Bernardo Silva the standard-bearer, running 13.7 kilometres — had he set off east from the Etihad Stadium, he would have been close to the border with Derbyshire by the time Anthony Taylor blew his whistle — City played Liverpool at their own game.
Silva’s shift is the most exhausting in the Premier League this season and Graeme Souness, no stranger to a scrap as a player, lauded the intensity. ‘The energy expended in the opening 45 minutes was like the normal 90 in a Premier League game,’ he said. And while we have come to expect that from Klopp’s Liverpool, this was new from a Guardiola team.
Not that City do not work hard. Guardiola’s demands and professional fervour are well known. He focusses tirelessly on recovering possession in training, and brooks no compromise on fitness.
When Guardiola arrived, Yaya Toure spent weeks in the gym before even being let near a firstteam training session. He had a playing weight Guardiola needed him to hit and, until then, was on the outside. So there have always been high standards. This, however, was different. Here was Guardiola sacrificing some of the finesse for fierceness, almost conforming to the expectation of a blood and thunder tear-up — the wild, untamed creature that makes England’s domestic competition unique. Perhaps that is
why many of the world’s most gifted coaches want to work here.
For, with 20 of the 28 players involved and both managers hailing from outside the British Isles, Manchester City and Liverpool delivered a game that felt wholly English in its ferocity. And Guardiola bought into that from the kickoff — indeed from a distance out, given what he said about the challenge in preparation.
He knew the importance of the win, he knew when to step it up, he knew when to compromise those mighty principles. That’s how a man goes close to 12 years with his record. Guardiola will always espouse the game’s finest qualities but, as importantly, he doesn’t make the same mistake twice.