Pep Guardiola, not just a manager or tactician, but a footballing visionary

— Manchester City (@ManCity) May 20, 2023
If Guardiola’s ideal was the Dream Team of Cruyff, the benchmark of City managers of coming generations would be Guardiola’s Dream Team. Guardiola had once said that “we are sons of the Dream Team, trying to emulate them.” City’s posterity is set to reproduce these same lines. If Barcelona is a club built in Cruyff’s image, Manchester City is a club designed in Guardiola’s image. There is a Guardiola influence in every detail at Etihad, from the length of the grass on turf to the design of the jersey, from the choice of support staff for even academy teams to identifying transfer targets.
Even if they somehow contrive to fumble the treble dream, Guardiola’s City artes have orchestrated the greatest era in the club’s hory. City had won three titles in the decade that preluded his arrival, but it was Guardiola who rendered the club an identity, a halo and fear, who instilled both beauty and direction to its football. You sense that even if Guardiola were to leave the club one fine day, the system and structure to dominate is firmly in place, unlike for instance Manchester United when Alex Ferguson left.

C 🏆 T Y pic.twitter.com/AfMV1Pp8Zn
— Manchester City (@ManCity) May 20, 2023
The depth of talent he possesses at his disposal is glittering. There are backups and backups for backups, yet to make them collectively click is the genius of a manager. He does not simply write the same names on the team sheet and expect them to go out and do the same thing over and over again. He tinkers, revises and, and retools. He swaps the positions of players, he switches their functions, he alters their formations. Two technical aspects stand out this season, both responses to additions and subtractions to his squad. The arrival of Erling Haaland necessitated a more direct approach.
While Haaland does press and defend, and could in a way morph to a Guardiola-like press-pass player, Guardiola knew that to harness the best out of the Norwegian striker, he needed a more direct passing  style, where Haaland could run into spaces with the awareness that he would meet a pass. The change was neither seamless nor instant. The notes that City strummed jarred at the start, but soon they discovered the perfect tune and rhyme. Since then, they have been akin to an orchestra with feet. It, in turn, unlocked the full potential of Kevin de Bruyne’s passing range too. Haaland’s jet heels and de Bruyne’s supersonic brain enhanced City’s threat on the counters too. Haaland was afforded the license to roam upfield—unusual of Guardiola’s teams where they press in packs—but he compensated for the loss of numerical superiority in pressing making one of his two full backs wander into the midfield, slot into the defensive midfielder hole.

The winning moment! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/QceofBIqoh
— Manchester City (@ManCity) May 20, 2023
When you turn back to Guardiola’s career, you realise that he has not been averse to making changes. There was indeed a time when Lionel Messi himself was a puzzle. Messi’s tendency to abandon his right-sided role and play more centrally narrowed the general formation of the team. But he let Messi be himself, instead inverted the full-backs and made them play wider.
Later in this season, he had to deal with the loss of Joao Cancelo, the Portuguese full-back who was central to City’s success in the last two years. But a dressing-room fall out with him last year saw him being shipped to Bayern Munich in January. Cancelo was both a robust defender as well as a creative full-back, funnily called the False Two, and a one-of-a-kind player. He did not try to manufacture a Cancelo out of Nathan Ake or Manuel Akanji, but gave armed John Stones more freedom to dart upfield. Just in time, Jack Grealish found his gears and City’s creative vigour amplified. Under him, the Englishman has evolved from a structurally wayward playmaker to a role-assured ass-maker, who does not waste too much time on the ball.

We love you too, @pepteam 💙 pic.twitter.com/ltu0DPaBkr
— Manchester City (@ManCity) May 20, 2023
It was also the greatest managerial triumph of all for Guardiola. There was a presupposition in his Barcelona days that everything 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 reality, he went about a massive overhaul, jettisoned its two most influential players Ronaldinho and Deco, wielded discipline slapping fines for coming late to training and persuaded Messi from pizza and cola. He was a left-field choice for coaching Barcelona—and there were a lot of critics and doubters—Jose Mourinho was the hot favourite. The then president Joan Laporta would famously say: “We chose a philosophy, not a brand.” Now, Guardiola is both brand and philosophy.

His success in Germany came with a rider—he managed a club that has been winning for decades and his inability to land the Champions League was seen as a failure. But City was different, he transformed them from upstarts to blue-blood. He has given them a hory and tradition. No cynic will mouth those lines again. “City have petrol and ideas,” as Arsene Wenger once said, in a half-sarcastic, half-complimentary tone. City has shown how money and ideas can work. Having money is important to succeed in this day and age, but you need ideas, and men of ideas, too, to make a footballing empire.
Just as Messi has redefined what it takes to be considered a truly great player, Guardiola has redefined what it takes to become a great manager, and under him City has redefined what it takes to be considered a great team. Guardiola’s Barcelona might be the greatest team he had ever managed, but it’s his City iterations that would ultimately define Guardiola the manager. If in Barcelona, he lives under the shadow of Cruyff, in Manchester he lives under his own shadow.