Hot on the heels of Paul Pogba’s record-breaking transfer to Manchester United from Juventus, city-rivals Manchester City announced a marquee signing of their own. The Blues broke the news of Everton defender John Stones’ arrival for 47.5 million Euros, albeit in an unexpected manner.
The most important acquisition for both Manchester clubs, though, has been in the managerial hot-seat. Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, the Big Two of football management, look set to mould their teams in their own image. The result? A tantalizing ‘Battle of Manchester’ not unlike Barcelona vs Real Madrid from 2010 to 2012.
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On the other hand, does the summer spending betray a lack of confidence shown by both managers in their squads? Would they look at each other’s team and wish they could swap?
Amid all the hype and fanfare, is it possible that Mourinho and Guardiola made a mistake by opting for the Red and Blue sides of Manchester respectively?
Mourinho’s Manchester United conundrum
Despite the summer transfers, feverish optimism from fans and claims of Red Devils being title contenders again, Mourinho realizes this Man United team is hardly built on his ethos, and admitted it in a recent interview.
His reasons are justified – for a side used to keeping possession, changing to vertical passing and fast transitions between attack and defence in the space of two months is too much of an ask. The fact that Mourinho thinks he would have been better off with ’20 new players’ is, in some ways, a damning assessment of United’s first-team.
To facilitate his more direct football, the ‘Special One’ has brought in four first-team players over the summer. Interestingly, players of similar profiles are already present in the Man City squad, barring Pogba (after whom Mourinho would have gone, irrespective of the destination). Eliaquim Mangala, Kevin de Bruyne and Sergio Aguero were the sort of players Mourinho was looking for when he got Eric Bailly, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
The similarities are uncanny. Mangala and Bailly seem to be cast from the same mould of fast, strong, aggressive centre-halves. Kevin de Bruyne and Mkhitaryan are prolific assist-givers with an eye for goal and the ability to play anywhere in attacking midfield. Aguero, while not possessing the swagger of ‘The Zlatan’, is a talismanic goal-scorer in his own right with the argument of Premier League experience in his favour.
A case for Guardiola to United
For all the flak Louis van Gaal received for his ‘boring’ brand of football, there were positives to his time at Old Trafford. Build-up was reliable, goals conceded were few, the record against top teams was decent and academy players were being given a chance to excel.
Where van Gaal did fail miserably, was breaking teams down in the final third. The lack of freedom for United’s attackers would invariably result in 0-0 scores at half-time in home games, vulnerability to counter-attacks and defeats against inferior opposition. Not to mention, it was pretty boring to watch.
This is where Pep Guardiola could have unlocked the Red Devils potential.
In pure footballing sense, Guardiola was the ideal candidate to develop on the base built by van Gaal at Manchester United. Everything, ranging from ball-playing centre-halves (Daley Blind) to intelligent defensive midfielders (Michael Carrick) to pacey full-backs (Luke Shaw) to exciting wide forwards (Anthony Martial, Marcus Rashford) would have been to his liking.
The technical ability of academy youngsters such as Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, Paddy McNair and Guillermo Varela was an added bonus. Even Wayne Rooney’s dwindling powers would have been maximized in a false-nine role flanked by runners.
There could not have been a better platform for el juego de posicion to be unleashed at the Premier League than Old Trafford. Instead, Pep is masterminding a needless rebuilding project, disguised as a ‘revolution’, in the blue side of Manchester.
Pep’s predicament at Manchester City
The Catalan trainer has already brought in five attackers, even though City were the league’s top-scorers in 2015/16. Four of these are aged 20 or younger, while the fifth, Nolito, is an ex-Barcelona player familiar with Guardiola’s methods.
It is crystal-clear that Guardiola is attempting to change a previously-successful style of attack to one that suits him. The transition is unlikely to be smooth and might take time, much like in Mourinho’s situation.
Moreover, the midfield, arguably the most important component of Pep’s teams, will hardly be to his liking. A midfield of Fernando, Fernandinho, an ageing Yaya Toure and Fabian Delph as back-up, has the workmanship and drive of Mourinho’s game but is nowhere near the level of intelligence and creativity that the ex-Bayern Munich coach wants.
The arrival of Ilkay Gundogan from Borussia Dortmund helps matters, but certain key elements are still lacking. The cerebral defensive midfielder, integral to Guardiola sides dominating games, is missing. So was a ball-playing centre-half till City decided to spend almost 50 million Euros on a promising but error-prone Stones.
Similar to Mourinho at United, most of Guardiola’s signings wouldn’t have been needed on the other side of Manchester. Daley Blind, despite widespread skepticism, held his own last season as a ball-playing defender.
Carrick would have played the role of Sergio Busquets at Barcelona and Xabi Alonso at Bayern. Martial, Lingard, Rashford and Adnan Januzaj were more than capable of fulfilling the roles expected of signings Leroy Sane, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Gabriel Jesus and Marlos Moreno, all of whom are young and new to English football.
If anyone needs any more convincing on this (completely hypothetical) argument, kindly compare the midfields of the two sides. On one side, there is a midfield two of Fernando and Fernandinho, on the other a midfield three of Carrick, Herrera and Mata. In an ideal football world, which side would Mourinho and Guardiola choose?
One man’s treasure, as they say, is another man’s trash.
What could (and should) have been..
Back to reality then. Manchester City, since appointing ex-Barcelona man Txiki Begiristain as director of football in 2012, had been attempting to lure Guardiola. The aim was to build City as a club on the ‘Barcelona model’.
Manchester United’s administration, meanwhile, has been comical at best since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson. The club had been selling dreams - first of the Scottish ‘Chosen One’, then the ‘philosophy’ - before realizing they needed an actual top manager (not that van Gaal isn’t a good manager, but Mourinho is what the former was 15 years back).
Having lost out to Bayern Munich and Chelsea in 2013, the Manchester clubs have finally succeeded in acquiring the services of Guardiola and Mourinho. They have failed, however, in providing their star managers a conducive footballing environment to excel.
Mourinho gets a side whose playing style is the anti-thesis of his famed seven-point plan and is, quite frankly, exactly the sort of team he likes to beat. Guardiola, on the other hand, has been handed a team which attacks ferociously but defends deep by forming an offside line at the edge of the eighteen-yard box.
The clubs, it seems, were so confident in their manager’s abilities that they forgot to do their own part. Or rather, did it in such a way, that both men are now in charge of a team tailor-made for the other.
The Battle of Manchester will eventually live up to its promise, so will the rivalry of the manager’s version of Messi vs Ronaldo.
But before that, Guardiola and Mourinho will have to refine their instruments. Because at the moment, they must be wishing they could swap.
