1. Track record
IT’S TRUE TO say that Pep Guardiola has never managed any team that’s not a European superpower (unless you count Barcelona’s B side) in the same way, for instance, that Louis van Gaal guided an unfashionable club like AZ to the Dutch title in 2009.
However, as Van Gaal and others have discovered, coaching a world-renowned side is not always as easy as it looks.
While Barcelona in 2008 did not exactly need post-Ferguson Man United levels of reinvigoration when their former player took over as manager, the Catalan side were nowhere near as healthy as they look today — star players such as Ronaldinho and Deco were past their best, while highly promising youngsters including Lionel Messi and Andres Iniesta had yet to truly fulfill their potential.
Guardiola took little time to endear himself to fans. In 2009, his first full year at the club, he became the first manager in history to win six trophies in one 12-month period — the Spanish League, Copa del Rey, Champions League, Spanish Super Cup, European Super Cup, and Club World Cup, before going on to win many more titles, including another La Liga and Champions League double in the 2010-11 campaign.
While he took over a Bayern side that had just won the treble, he has still arguably emerged from his latest managerial experience with his reputation enhanced, winning back-to-back Bundesligas, even if he has yet deliver an elusive Champions League trophy to the German club.
2. Philosophy/style of play
There is no doubt that Pep Guardiola insists on a very distinct style of football.
Like Jurgen Klopp, Jose Mourinho and even Louis van Gaal at his best, Guardiola is a visionary who won’t accept even when world-renowned players refuse to follow orders/don’t suit the system (hence, the aforementioned selling of Ronaldinho and Deco during his Barca days).
His high-intensity pressing and focus on possession football could consequently lead to a revolution at City — for instance, it’s difficult to imagine an ageing individual like 32-year-old Yaya Toure, who Guardiola sold at Barca, being utilised as much as he has been under outgoing coach Manuel Pellegrini.
The Spanish boss instead favours hard-working, dynamic and often young players, and consequently, fringe squad members such as highly promising 19-year-old striker Kelechi Iheanacho — who netted a hat-trick against Aston Villa in the FA Cup at the weekend — may get more of a chance to thrive during his reign.
3. System in place
It’s no secret that Man City have coveted Pep Guardiola for a long time now, as indicated by today’s announcement, which made reference to previous negotiations in 2012.
City have done everything in their power to attract Guardiola to the club, including employing previous Barca allies Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain as chief executive and director of football respectively.
Guardiola will consequently join Man City knowing that he will be working with people that he is familiar with and can trust, and without an abundance of perpetually dissatisfied ex-players criticising him at will.
Therefore, the foundations are certainly in place for the 45-year-old coach to thrive, to such an extent that he may be tempted to undertake a more long-term project, compared with his previous three and four-year stints at Bayern and Barca.
4. Contacts/reputation
One vital and oft-overlooked asset Guardiola will bring to City is his impeccable reputation in world football. While such esteemed status won’t win football matches, it certainly won’t do the Eastlands outfit any harm.
Often, in-demand football stars picking one big club over another comes down to fine details, when they’ll be given vast sums of cash either way. Having a figure like Pep Guardiola at the helm will instantaneously make City more attractive to top footballers and could genuinely sway certain individuals who are on the fence about moving to Manchester.
And on a related note, managing a dressing room full of high-profile players with big egos is always a challenge, as Rafa Benitez recently discovered to his cost at Real Madrid. But Guardiola, an incredibly rare example of someone who has enjoyed near-endless success at the highest level as both a player and a manager, will surely earn the backing of the dressing room with relative ease.
Moreover, the highly-rated manager has already built up a lengthy list of invaluable contacts in the game — he managed to bring one of Barcelona’s best youngsters, Thiago Alcântara, to Bayern Munich and will be well-equipped to land similar coups at City.
5. Obsessive nature
Arrigo Sacchi, the legendary coach who revolutionised football with Milan during the late ’80s and early ’90s, was a renowned workaholic.
Justifying his fanatical nature when it came to football, Sacchi quoted an Italian poet who once said: “Without obsession, there is no art.”
Guardiola has often been compared to Sacchi, owing to the manner in which his Barcelona side revolutionised football, in the similar way to how the Italian coach’s Milan side did before them — albeit with totally contrasting styles of football.
And the incoming Man City coach shares a similar mindset to Sacchi, forever fretting about passing lanes among other innovative ideas.
“You invite him for a meal in a restaurant, hoping that he’ll forget about football, but 32 minutes later you can see his mind is already wandering,” a close confidant of Guardiola, Manel Estiarte, explained in Marti Perarnau’s Pep Confidential, an acclaimed portrait of the idiosyncratic manager released in 2014.
Whether or not all these impressive attributes will be enough to succeed at City remains to be seen, but while Guardiola is by no means guaranteed to succeed, he is surely the closest thing in the world of football management right now to a sure-fire bet.
Great going by both athletes. Very well done.