Sam Wallace
Why Pellegrini might not be Man City’s biggest problem
In his splendid autobiography, Andrea Pirlo describes his PlayStation Fifa marathons with Milan team-mate Alessandro Nesta, although Pirlo concedes that apart from one brief phase he had no interest in playing as Milan – and neither did Nesta.
They both wanted to be Barcelona, and so it was: Barcelona v Barcelona for hours in their hotel room. Nesta would win more often than not and Pirlo lamented: “It’s not like I could use the excuse that his coach was better than mine: it was Pep Guardiola for him and Pep Guardiola for me.” These two giants of the Italian game were so obsessed with Guardiola that Pirlo admitted they joked about kidnapping him.
Pirlo finally met Guardiola, in August 2010, when the then Barça coach tapped him up after a pre-season friendly against Milan, and the infatuation was sealed. “I wasn’t really bothered about much else in that room besides the person who had summoned me,” Pirlo writes. “Guardiola was sitting in an armchair, he wore a white shirt and a pair of dark trousers whose colour matched that of his tie. He was elegant in the extreme, much like his conversation.”
And so it goes on. The point being that the cult of Pep extends even to one of the most sophisticated footballers in the world. Pirlo wanted to play for him as much as your average eight-year-old Fifa obsessive would have Guardiola in charge of his team.
And why not? He is the coach who built the greatest team of the modern era. He won the Champions League in his first season as a top-flight manager, and then won it again two years later. He has managed the best players, he wears the best suits and, in a modern game that values high-maintenance, big-statement hair as much as a 1984 Bon Jovi photo-shoot, Guardiola has even made male pattern baldness look cool. Well, his at least.
The answer, for every top club in need of a playing culture, a new direction and some trophies always seems to be Guardiola. It was Chelsea’s answer before they were knocked back and reappointed Jose Mourinho. It would have been Manchester United’s before they appointed Louis van Gaal. No doubt Paris Saint-Germain would be keen. It just so happens that another European super-club got their first.
Now it is Manchester City who covet Guardiola and the question is whether they might hang on to Manuel Pellegrini for one more season to bridge the gap to the end of Guardiola’s Bayern Munich contract. City’s director of football, Txiki Begiristain, was the man who appointed Guardiola at Barcelona and it is his close relationship with His Pepness that, it is thought, might just swing it. But it all just sounds, well, rather desperate.
As they plunge deeper into their spring of discontent, and the future around Pellegrini is once more uncertain, City find themselves joining a long queue of clubs who would like to appoint Guardiola. But he can only be the answer for one club, in one league, at one time and, if he were to leave Bayern in a year’s time, there might be more attractive propositions in the Premier League than City.
Either way, if City are to build the kind of success they promised when Pellegrini arrived in 2013 then there has to be more than one solution to the problem.
That decision might even be a show of faith in Pellegrini, and it should be said the club have not wavered from that position yet. When Pellegrini arrived in 2013 the chief executive, Ferran Soriano, talked about their new manager building “a football concept and a way of working that will last 10 years”. But concepts and plans are difficult to sustain when you are on a run of eight defeats in 14 games.
In the speech Soriano made in Melbourne last week about City’s principles of “attacking football” he stuck by his guns in one respect. “We never, ever renounce our values of the way we play football,” he said. “We believe, because all organisations need some set of basic values that people believe in.”
All admirable in its own way, but the circumstances Soriano and Begiristain encountered at Barcelona are very different to those they now find in Manchester. At Barcelona tradition of play was well established and there was a rich source of players from the academy. In terms of history and status, City are very different to what Barça were even in 2003, when both men were appointed by president Joan Laporta at a club that had finished sixth in
La Liga the previous season. What worked for Barcelona, will not necessarily work for City at this point in their development. Neither is it clear how the vision segues with the welldocumented, ageing profile of the City squad that has occurred on Begiristain’s watch. As for the academy production line, Pellegrini has said himself that it is currently no substitute for high-end investment in experienced players.
As you look around the managerial stories of Europe this season very few conform to a model. Van Gaal has reached his best team through a process of elimination often forced upon him. Luis Enrique has struggled at times at Barça, despite having been intensively groomed by the club. One of the most curious has been Stefano Pioli at Lazio, who this weekend moved into second place in Serie A, above their city rivals Roma.
Over the last 10 years for Lazio, who are also in the final of the Coppa Italia, their best league finish has been third, in 2007 and they were 10th last year. Until now Pioli’s career has been equally unremarkable with this his 10th job in 11 years, many of which have ended in his sacking. Hitherto a journeyman coach, his career and Lazio’s fortunes have finally taken off.
At the blue-chip end of the game, which City occupy, it seems no one can see beyond the usual circle of super-club coaches. Guardiola is the ultimate prize, and City’s Barça-style mission statement which – laudable in its aims – is starting to feel like a bit of a millstone as the club’s ambitions veer off course.
Meanwhile, the embattled Pellegrini adopts that grim expression of his, redolent of a man steeling himself at the front door before going in to tell his wife he has just been sacked. In an ideal world, you suspect that Guardiola would be City’s choice. Back in the real world, the solution to their problems might take a bit more imagination than simply hanging on for the services of the man everyone wants.
Fans losing faith after dismal 12 months at Craven Cottage
Sunday was a year since Fulham’s last win as a Premier League club, 1-0 against Norwich, when many wrongly thought Felix Magath had turned it around. Twelve months on and tomorrow they face Rotherham at Craven Cottage, the two sides respectively 20th and 21st in the Championship. It has been another dismal season for Fulham. The 25,000-plus crowd that watched that win over Norwich has shrunk to just more than 15,000 for Friday night’s home draw with Wigan.
Chelsea’s kids win again – surely now is their time
Chelsea Under-19s won the final of the Uefa Youth League in Nyon yesterday against Shakhtar Donetsk, the final not an inconsiderable achievement for the Ukrainians, given the conflict in their home city. For Chelsea, it goes with, among others, last season’s Premier League Under-21s title; their Under-18s reaching a fourth consecutive FA Youth Cup final next week (the club have won two of the previous three) and a runnersup place in the 2013 NextGen Series. There must be a firstteam player in there somewhere.