Pep Guardiola is accustomed to success. His list of triumphs is too long to comfortably enumerate here but is highlighted by two Champions League trophies and six league titles in seven seasons as a head coach. There is not a trophy-less season on his curriculum.
But that could very well change this year. His Manchester City side are eight points off leaders Chelsea in the Premier League, already out of the League Cup and face, in the Champions League, an in-form and free-scoring Monaco side, capable of ending Guardiola’s record of having reached the final four in every season of his coaching career to date.
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The Monaco tie is likely to be the typical Guardiola encounter. City will look to impose themselves, dominate possession and control the flow of the match. Monaco, meanwhile, will seek to maintain their defensive shape and then break forward quickly and incisively on the counter with a mix of pace, power and precision.
The pattern is already established and if City do not come out on top, it is sure to bring about the latest round of complaints about Guardiola’s stubbornness, inability to adapt his approach and other such criticisms, justified or not, that have arisen every time City have stumbled so far this season.
It might even provide Guardiola himself with the biggest test of his fidelity to the philosophy that has thus far served him so well.
Sticking to your principles
Upon taking charge of Barcelona in 2008, the Spaniard handed each of his players a copy of the novel ‘Learning to Lose’ by his good friend David Trueba. He repeated the gesture at Bayern Munich and, given that the book is also available in English translation, it is safe to assume that he did so once again when he joined Manchester City last summer.
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The novel, which focuses on the lives of three generations of the same Madrid family, alongside that of a recently arrived Argentinian footballer, can be interpreted in numerous ways. But its clearest message is that one shouldn’t be afraid of losing, in life or otherwise, if the alternative is to go against your principles in search of fleeting success or happiness.
Or as Marcelo Bielsa, with whom Guardiola and Trueba enjoyed a long chat over wine and grilled meat during a formative trip to Argentina prior to the start of Guardiola’s coaching career, puts it: “In this profession, principles are much more important than sporting convenience. Teams with principles end up, in the long run, being better from a sporting perspective.”
A clear philosophy
So if Guardiola is often portrayed as stubborn or inflexible it is because he is. At least on a macro level.
He has regularly introduced variations in formation and the details of his approach, from the use of Lionel Messi as a false nine at Barcelona through to centrally located full-backs and stronger use of the flanks at Bayern. But the central tenet of his philosophy has always remained fixed: attack in a structured manner that allows the ball to be retained and if lost, facilitates winning it back as soon as possible.
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That is Guardiola: a meticulous and obsessive thinker, consistently seeking advantages, but always within the framework of a set philosophy.
“There’s only one way to win,” he said towards the end of his first season at Bayern. “And that’s to play the kind of good football I understand best – over-run the middle of the pitch and pass the ball even more.”
A lesson learned
The Spaniard has only wavered from that commitment on one occasion. And he lived to regret it.
Ahead of the second leg of Bayern’s Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid in 2014, a group of his players suggested to him that the best way to get the home crowd behind them and come back from their first leg deficit would be to pour forward and overwhelm their visitors.
Their advice was taken, with disastrous consequences. Bayern conceded three times inside the opening 35 minutes on route to a comprehensive 0-4 defeat.
“I spend the whole season refusing to use a 4-2-4,” Guardiola said afterwards, as detailed in Marti Perarnau’s book, ‘Herr Pep’. “The whole season. And I decide to do it tonight, the most important night of the year. A complete f*** up.”
Indeed, as he watched his side succumb to defeat from the sidelines, he may well have felt a strong connection to the grandfather in Trueba’s novel, who muses: “How strange to encounter your reflection all of a sudden and have it be alien to you. Recognise yourself in it, know that it’s you, but at the same time feel like someone else.”
It is a mistake Guardiola is unlikely to ever make again. Win or lose against Monaco, win or lose in the grand scheme of things this season, City will play to his principles.
