Pep Guardiola: The Man City manager described as football’s Che Guevara

Pep Guardiola: The Man City manager described as football’s Che Guevara


Guardiola is a sponge, keen to learn from anyone from England rugby union coach Eddie Jones to chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. Perhaps on some level he is making up for his lack of structured education.

The principles he learned, ones he has evolved and improved over time, remain strictly non-negotiable. He might add to them by listening to others, but they are strict.

It goes like this.

What makes a team a unit, what makes this sport fun, is the ball.

Players became players to play with a ball, so let them have it as much as possible. And let’s build around the idea of having it all the time. But the ball burns you. Give it to a colleague as soon as you can. Play quick, play simple. And when you lose it – get it back as soon as you can, because it should hurt not to have it.

If you mix into this belief his obsessive desire to find solutions to problems (not exclusive to him as Cruyff, Bielsa, Mauricio Pochettino and Sir Alex Ferguson are made from the same mould), you find a coach that has developed a new way of winning; not the best way, just a different one.

Former Argentina manager and World Cup winner Cesar Luis Menotti, who earlier this year shared conversation and wine chosen by connoisseur Pep, admits Guardiola has changed football.

“Pep is the Che Guevara of football. I always said a revolutionary wins or dies in the fight and Pep’s idea remains unwavering,” said Menotti.

“He’s never going to change it: he wants to play well, he wants to own the space and he wants command of the ball. And he wants to handle the time, to stay ahead of the curve.”

His obsession with football can lead to feelings of guilt and remorse with those people closest to him, mostly his family.

I remember his dread when he missed out on a concert his daughter was playing in at school because he had forgotten about it and was watching DVDs of matches involving Barcelona’s next opponents, Getafe.

Having a sabbatical after Barcelona was a way to compensate for the time he had been away from them. But three months after saying goodbye to the Camp Nou he started conversations with Bayern.

In the early years of his coaching career he would prepare for any game in the same way, no matter the opponent. Three days before it, he spent hours watching videos of the rival, identifying weaknesses.

Then he would show clips to the players followed by a training session solely about the match.

It is here you will find Guardiola’s real magic. Once he has spotted a weakness in an opponent’s armour he can explain to his players how to exploit it.

Speaking about the 2011 Champions League final at Wembley – when Barca beat Manchester United 3-1 – Javier Mascherano told me: “While he was talking it wasn’t as if he was referring to a game that we were about to take part in, it was as if we were actually playing it right there.

“He was up and down, side to side in front of the board, gesticulating – and if you shut your eyes you were out there in the middle of the action.

“Everything that he said would happen, happened as he said it would. During the match I was thinking, ‘I’ve seen this already, I’ve already heard all about it – because Pep has already told me about it’.”



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