In the underground of the Camp Nou stadium, Josep “Pep” Guardiola has taken over an office without luxury or windows. Between 2008 and 2012, the FC Barcelona coach wears out his eyes on video montages of his next opponents. The hour no longer exists, he blackens notes, draws diagrams and scratches a soon-to-be bald head. Then “Comes a moment, like a flash, when my job makes sense”, jubilant this cerebral, who, during a seminar given in Buenos Aires in 2016, told the scene as a sort of checkmate before even moving his first pawn.
Since the 2016-2017 season, Pep Guardiola, 50, has managed Manchester City. If the Catalan coach continues to stick to this exercise, with his assistant and mentor, Juanma Lillo, it is not known whether the same cave has been set up at the Etihad Stadium, theater of the semi-final return of the League. champions against Paris-Saint-Germain, Tuesday May 4.
According to statistics compiled by UEFA from 378 previous ones, their 2-1 victory at the Parc des Princes gives the Citizens a 93% chance of going to Istanbul on May 29 to play their first final in Europe’s flagship competition. But what drives Pep Guardiola is to reduce the remaining 7% to zero.
Because he is the coach who has faced him the most often (19 times with Espanyol Barcelona, Tottenham and now PSG), Mauricio Pochettino knows better than anyone that his colleague hates copy and paste. Not intellectually stimulating enough for this perfectionist, who never disconnects more than “Thirty-two minutes” football, according to his personal assistant, Manuel Estiarte. Pochettino guesses a starting team and maybe a different tactical scheme from the first leg, but which ones?
“The worst mess of my career”
If the main principles at Guardiola are set in stone – starting from the back with a game of short passes, depriving the opponent of the ball and cornering him in front of his surface – his execution fluctuates according to an identified weakness. Against Lyon in August 2020, Guardiola had thus copied the three-player defense of the Lyon coach, Rudi Garcia, to better counter his vis-à-vis. Result: a failed match, a surprise elimination in the quarterfinals and a new failure for “City” in the Champions League, with criticism that goes hand in hand.
At Bayern Munich (2013-2016), Pep Guardiola has certainly won a lot, changed the paradigm of German football more direct in his game before his arrival, but he also failed to give a new “big-eared cut” to the Bavarian club. Blame it on this quest for the perfect adaptation, which sometimes blurs its message?
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