Pep Guardiola did it again and there are no precedents. Winning your fourth consecutive Premier is now history. Winning it with 91 points is a scandal. Winning it while being dominant in every game is admirable. Winning it over Arteta, who is his disciple, is further proof of the influence he is having in the Premier and in world football.
Before the tie against Madrid, I visited him in Manchester and he pulled up a chair to talk. The chair had wheels and, after three minutes, to the beat of his speech, the chair was a vehicle that there was no way to stop. For an hour he poured out all his competitive madness and I ended up with a stiff neck following his zigzags. Passion, a natural component of his personality, is an example and the example is contagious. It’s beautiful to see passion at work and it’s impossible not to come away excited from the experience. Excited by the eloquence, by the obsession, by the love of football that is implicit in so much energy. Guardiola encourages his players’ desire to win, but first he forces them to think and put their talent at the service of the orchestra that is the team. Being your player must be as fascinating as it is exhausting. Making history has that honor and that price.
When Guardiola finished his cycle in Barcelona, he needed a sabbatical year to rest and reset. On that occasion he told me that he was so tired that Messi came to seem like a normal player to him. He must have been dead. So that we have more information about his personality, we must say that he came out of that break speaking German. If he calls that rest, imagine how he will interpret the word work. The truth is that Barça, in addition to his first experience, was about profession and feeling, a very unrecommended combination, as Xavi knows very well these days.
Now, in a work environment that you will not find anywhere else, because your bosses, in addition to being great professionals, are friends who protect you, your energy is made of love for the task and commitment. Surely also from fear, the feeling felt by a winner who knows that no one is willing to forgive him if he does not win.
Guardiola never ends. The seasons do not begin where the previous one ends, but that is just a reference for a new turn. Instead of seeking refuge in what worked for him, he surprises with new creations that force his players to renew their attention and his rivals to reinterpret his responses. He always starts from position, possession and pressure, but football is about functioning and his teams are never the same team. Tomorrow there will be another final and we don’t know, we will never know, what awaits us.
There are many ways to play well and Pep’s is not just one more. It is not easy for efficiency to be understood with beauty nor for intelligence to be understood with emotion. Soccer players play to win, but what makes them proud is playing well. And to play well, you must first have permission, then feel protected by the team and, finally, enjoy what you do. As does Rodri, owner and lord of the entire field; as De Bruyne does, clarifying; like Foden does, accelerating; like Haaland does, finishing. Like everyone does, playing. If the Guardiola method allows all that, it makes you want to say: long live the method.
Spain, Germany and, above all, England received Guardiola with the same distrust: “this type of game doesn’t work here,” they said. Although they will continue to be asked for it every year, I believe that six Premiers, four of them in a row, do not need more tests. It will turn out, then, that this type of game does exist and has no borders.
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