Joao showing he Can solve left-back issue
THE beautiful, barmy brilliance of Pep Guardiola’s City was laid bare by the manager’s words about Phil Foden earlier this week.
“If he played left-back, he would play good,” said the manager - who actually gave the youngster his first start for the senior team as a left wing-back in 2017.
Everyone knows what Guardiola meant - there are no round holes that this extremely talented square peg cannot fill.
But his words rang hollow in one sense because City’s actual ‘leftback’ can play just like Phil Foden!
Joao Cancelo was the Blues’ sole nomination for the Premier League player of the month for September, and no wonder.
He has made the slot his own with a series of scintillating displays and capped it with his second goal of the season, a striker’s run, chest control and nutmeg finish to give the Blues the lead at Brugge on Tuesday.
The City ‘left-back’ has scored as many this season as Foden and £100m forward Jack Grealish, and he is unlikely to stop there. Playing left-back initially did not sit right with Cancelo, who had become the most expensive right-back in history when City brought him in a complicated £60m deal that saw Danilo head the other way to Juventus.
That deal sparked off the usual mindless drivel about the Blues ruining football by spending £60m on fullbacks.
Anyone who has watched Guardiola’s teams, including this excellent Blues side, knows his fullbacks are far more than the stocky, bulldog stoppers of English yore, and are also far advanced on the athletic, overlapping pseudowingers of more recent times.
A Guardiola full-back is a playmaker, a midfield overloader, a dashing winger and sometimes a centre forward - as Cancelo showed as he made the run for Foden’s exquisite pass at Brugge.
Last season, when Kevin de Bruyne was injured, Cancelo took on the Belgian’s role of picking out runners from deep-lying positions with accurate, lofted passes.
On Tuesday, he was the runner and Foden the quarterback. And that is the beauty of City - the opposition cannot know where the next attack is coming from, when you have a ‘left-back’ who pops up just about anywhere on the pitch.
Guardiola used the term ‘left-back’ himself, but as far as the Blues are concerned, the term is obsolete, other than being the area of the pitch where a player stands when the game kicks off.
Cancelo has shown that even having a defensive deficiency does not prevent you from being a highly-effective ‘leftback’ in Guardiola’s team.
Against Liverpool, Cancelo followed a superb first-half attacking display with a distinctly average second-half showing, when Liverpool fought back and exposed the Blues’ left flank.
That is an area where he has to improve if he wants to become the perfect all-rounder.
It is interesting to note Cancelo originally did not seem to like the idea of being stuffed into the problem left-back slot after he arrived in 2019. He made his debut in that position in a 2-0 home defeat by Wolves, and looked like a fish out of water, constantly - and predictably – dragging the ball back onto his right foot and seeking to go infield, without much success.
His body language was awful - he looked like a player who was unhappy at being played out of position, and his performance reflected it.
In his next start, a fortnight later, he was at right-back, at Crystal Palace, and was good.
But Kyle Walker rose to the challenge and made that slot his own, leaving Cancelo to either
Pep made it plain that Cancelo’s footballing talents would not be wasted in dashes up and down the flank
re-invent himself - or be re-invented by Guardiola - or feed off scraps in terms of game time.
The Blues boss solved the problem by sticking him at left-back but making it plain that Cancelo’s footballing talents would not be wasted in dashes up and down the flank, ending with pointless crosses.
He would be expected to invert, join in the midfield build-up, become a little bit De Bruyne, a little bit Ilkay Gundogan, a little bit Aleks Kolarov.
And it has worked superbly. There had been talk that Cancelo was hankering after a move back to Italy or Spain after a dispiriting debut season in which he made just 19 starts in Premier League and Champions League, only four of them at left-back.
Last season he started 27 of the 38 league games as the Blues won the title, although he sat out the Champions League final on the bench, and increasingly Guardiola trusted him in the leftback role.
Aleks Zinchenko’s injury and Ben Mendy’s suspension this season have cleared the way for Cancelo to get a run at left-back, and he has been outstanding.
He has played more minutes than anyone else in the squad, even goalkeeper Ederson and the normally undroppable Ruben Dias.
With the possible exception of Bernardo Silva, there has been no better performer for City, and few in the Premier League.
His interview for the club’s own website this week marked the completion of his evolution from Walker’s rival at right-back - where he still plays from time to time - to firstchoice left-back, and one of the first names on the teamsheet.
He said: “I was trained as a rightback, but I like being a versatile player because during the year there are a lot of injuries and I want to help the team. So I can adapt to different positions.
“Guardiola helped me a lot in adapting to different positions and today I feel like a much better player, both mentally and tactically.
“I try to adapt to the team as best I can.
“I’m happy to be able to play in a variety of positions and I think I’m the type of play that every team wants to have on the squad because of my versatility.”