— Manchester Metropolis (@ManCity) May 20, 2023
If Guardiola’s perfect was the Dream Workforce of Cruyff, the benchmark of Metropolis managers of coming generations could be Guardiola’s Dream Workforce. Guardiola had as soon as stated that “we’re sons of the Dream Workforce, making an attempt to emulate them.” Metropolis’s posterity is ready to breed these similar strains. If Barcelona is a membership inbuilt Cruyff’s picture, Manchester Metropolis is a membership designed in Guardiola’s picture. There’s a Guardiola affect in each element at Etihad, from the size of the grass on turf to the design of the jersey, from the selection of help employees for even academy groups to figuring out switch targets.
Even when they someway contrive to fumble the treble dream, Guardiola’s Metropolis artistes have orchestrated the best period within the membership’s historical past. Metropolis had received three titles within the decade that preluded his arrival, nevertheless it was Guardiola who rendered the membership an id, a halo and worry, who instilled each magnificence and course to its soccer. You sense that even when Guardiola had been to go away the membership one high quality day, the system and construction to dominate is firmly in place, not like as an illustration Manchester United when Alex Ferguson left.
C 🏆 T Y pic.twitter.com/AfMV1Pp8Zn
— Manchester Metropolis (@ManCity) May 20, 2023
The depth of expertise he possesses at his disposal is glittering. There are backups and backups for backups, but to make them collectively click on is the genius of a supervisor. He doesn’t merely write the identical names on the group sheet and anticipate them to exit and do the identical factor again and again. He tinkers, revises and, and retools. He swaps the positions of gamers, he switches their capabilities, he alters their formations. Two technical facets stand out this season, each responses to additions and subtractions to his squad. The arrival of Erling Haaland necessitated a extra direct strategy.
Whereas Haaland does press and defend, and will in a method morph to a Guardiola-like press-pass participant, Guardiola knew that to harness the very best out of the Norwegian striker, he wanted a extra direct passing type, the place Haaland might run into areas with the notice that he would meet a go. The change was neither seamless nor prompt. The notes that Metropolis strummed jarred in the beginning, however quickly they found the proper tune and rhyme. Since then, they’ve been akin to an orchestra with ft. It, in flip, unlocked the total potential of Kevin de Bruyne’s passing vary too. Haaland’s jet heels and de Bruyne’s supersonic mind enhanced Metropolis’s risk on the counters too. Haaland was afforded the license to roam upfield—uncommon of Guardiola’s groups the place they press in packs—however he compensated for the lack of numerical superiority in urgent by making one in all his two full backs wander into the midfield, slot into the defensive midfielder gap.
The successful second! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/QceofBIqoh
— Manchester Metropolis (@ManCity) May 20, 2023
If you flip again to Guardiola’s profession, you realise that he has not been averse to creating modifications. There was certainly a time when Lionel Messi himself was a puzzle. Messi’s tendency to desert his right-sided function and play extra centrally narrowed the final formation of the group. However he let Messi be himself, as a substitute inverted the full-backs and made them play wider.
Later on this season, he needed to cope with the lack of Joao Cancelo, the Portuguese full-back who was central to Metropolis’s success within the final two years. However a dressing-room fall out with him final 12 months noticed him being shipped to Bayern Munich in January. Cancelo was each a sturdy defender in addition to a inventive full-back, funnily referred to as the False Two, and a one-of-a-kind participant. He didn’t attempt to manufacture a Cancelo out of Nathan Ake or Manuel Akanji, however gave armed John Stones extra freedom to dart upfield. Simply in time, Jack Grealish discovered his gears and Metropolis’s inventive vigour amplified. Below him, the Englishman has advanced from a structurally wayward playmaker to a role-assured assist-maker, who doesn’t waste an excessive amount of time on the ball.
We love you too, @pepteam 💙 pic.twitter.com/ltu0DPaBkr
— Manchester Metropolis (@ManCity) May 20, 2023
It was additionally the best managerial triumph of all for Guardiola. There was a presupposition in his Barcelona days that every little thing was served to him on a platter, from Messi to the pass-masters Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta to Tiki Taka. It was false. In actuality, he went a few large overhaul, jettisoned its two most influential gamers Ronaldinho and Deco, wielded self-discipline by slapping fines for coming late to coaching and persuaded Messi from pizza and cola. He was a left-field selection for teaching Barcelona—and there have been loads of critics and doubters—Jose Mourinho was the recent favorite. The then president Joan Laporta would famously say: “We selected a philosophy, not a model.” Now, Guardiola is each model and philosophy.
His success in Germany got here with a rider—he managed a membership that has been successful for many years and his incapability to land the Champions League was seen as a failure. However Metropolis was completely different, he remodeled them from upstarts to blue-blood. He has given them a historical past and custom. No cynic will mouth these strains once more. “Metropolis have petrol and concepts,” as Arsene Wenger as soon as stated, in a half-sarcastic, half-complimentary tone. Metropolis has proven how cash and concepts can work. Having cash is necessary to succeed at the present time, however you want concepts, and males of concepts, too, to make a footballing empire.
Simply as Messi has redefined what it takes to be thought of a very nice participant, Guardiola has redefined what it takes to turn out to be an ideal supervisor, and underneath him Metropolis has redefined what it takes to be thought of an ideal group. Guardiola’s Barcelona is likely to be the best group he had ever managed, nevertheless it’s his Metropolis iterations that may in the end outline Guardiola the supervisor. If in Barcelona, he lives underneath the shadow of Cruyff, in Manchester he lives underneath his personal shadow.