It seems like yesterday when Pep Guardiola began building the perfect football clock, a work of unparalleled precision that has transformed the game like never before. Yes, he had a rich background as a player and boundless curiosity, driven by his passionate character and the ideology of his master, Johan Cruyff. A good career, perhaps excellent, as a coach could be expected from Pep. “A coach on the field,” he was called when he conducted Barça’s orchestra from midfield.
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He had exquisite footwork and a privileged mind, enough for any fan to understand the tremendous value of his position, defensive midfielder. Guardiola was the director Cruyff used to change Barça’s life and, by extension, Spanish football. So much time later, it can be said without risk that Pep has changed the life of world football.
After ten memorable seasons – six league titles, one European Cup, three English Cups, five Carabao Cups, finals and semifinals everywhere, goal and points records that will hardly be surpassed, 70% wins in over 1,000 matches – Guardiola leaves Manchester City. He states that his time at the club has come. He feels the same exhaustion that consumed Jurgen Klopp, his admired nemesis at Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool.
“I was one of those City fans who never won four games in a row,” said Noel Gallagher, Oasis leader, “until Pep gave us four consecutive Premier League championships.” However, it is not yet time for nostalgia. The citizen fans will say goodbye today to the coach who this season has won two titles (English Cup and Carabao Cup) and chased Arsenal until the last Premier match, irrefutable proof of Guardiola’s relevance in a team radically transformed in recent months.
His bond with a city of wind and rain, adhered for decades to the hegemony of Manchester United, presided over by the gigantic figure of Alex Ferguson, an exceptional leader but not a revolutionary, will remain in the past. That role has been fulfilled by Guardiola. There is football before and after Guardiola, in England and the rest of the map. His influence is seen in the elite and progressively in the rest of the football pyramid, down to the youth base.
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Goalkeepers don’t play the same, nor full-backs, a position of lesser prestige for decades and now crucial in all aspects. The false nine was talked about before Pep, but he consecrated the idea in the famous 2-6 that Barça inflicted on Real Madrid at the Bernabéu. He moved Eto’o to the right and shifted Messi to the undetectable position that troubled traditional defenses. It was his first year as Barça coach, marked by absolute success – six titles won – and initial skepticism, characteristic of each of his ventures, first at Bayern, then at City.
At Barça he was too young, unproven, a crazy solution for the team’s huge crisis. In the Bundesliga the challenge was double: to bring a new culture to Bayern, a club hyper-vigilant with coaches, and confirm it in the Bundesliga’s vertigo. Three years, three consecutive league titles. The Premier League awaited him with very English condescension. “English football is not made for coaches like Guardiola,” was the most widespread opinion. The morbid pleasure of future failure prevailed.
Ten years later, his mark on English football is monumental, as it was in German and previously Spanish football (Spain won the 2010 World Cup, Germany achieved it in 2014). Meanwhile, Guardiola faced a paradox. At Barça he built the perfect clock, scrutinized, reviewed, and deconstructed in all the world football chancelleries, so Pep had to defend his ideas and, at the same time, solve the problem of the success of his proposals, enthusiastically received by rivals, by football in general. It is clear that he also emerges a winner from that exhausting work.
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