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Manchester City fails with Guardiola: is he the problem?

2020-08-16T06:43:06.536Z


Manchester City was actually considered to be Bayern’s biggest competitor in the battle for the Champions League title. Then the team lost to outsider Lyon. Now coach Pep Guardiola is also under criticism.


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Pep Guardiola with star player Kevin de Bruyne: Never reached the semi-finals with City

Photo: 

POOL / REUTERS

Pep Guardiola took a sip from the water bottle, then took a deep breath and then exhaled it, right into the microphone in front of him. As if he were arming himself for what was to come.

The first question he was asked at the press conference was not about Manchester City's early failure in the Champions League. Not how it could be that Guardiola's team lost 3-1 to Olympique Lyon, arguably the weakest of all quarter-finalists.

It was about a referee's decision.

So Pep Guardiola directed the conversation to that himselfTheme. "We didn't make it," he said after a few words. "I didn't make it."

Actually, it seemed agreed that City would beat Lyon. Bayern would have waited in the semifinals. Guardiola against his ex-club, it would have been a highlight of this sporting year.

Instead, City was countered by a club that were seventh in France's Ligue 1 when the season was canceled in March, 28 points behind champions Paris. Who had played two games since then.

The story of the 90 minutes from Lisbon is not the real topic. It's a bigger question. It concerns Guardiola himself and is about whether missed opportunities or mistakes on the defensive are the reason for defeats in the European Cup. But the trainer.

English media call the problem "overthinking"

Guardiola has won 28 titles since becoming head coach at Barcelona in 2008/2009. José Mourinho received 13 trophies in the same period, Jürgen Klopp nine. Wherever he worked, Guardiola became a master, and with a very own style that inspired other coaches, such as Thomas Tuchel or Julian Nagelsmann.

While the two are now in the semi-finals with Paris and Leipzig, Guardiola has to watch again. In Barcelona he had won the competition twice in four years. With Bayern he always made it to the semi-finals in three seasons. With City he never got beyond the quarter-finals.

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Raheem Sterling missed Manchester's best chance

Photo: POOL / REUTERS

In English media, one term is used again and again around Guardiola and the Champions League: overthinking.

Loosely translated, he means: plan something so much that you lose yourself in your own thoughts. Guardiola, it is alleged, tends to unnecessarily complicate big games. He adapts to the opponent, deviates too much from what he usually gives his team.

Instead of fighting and winning, it's about geometry

The criticism is aimed at a point that makes Guardiola a stimulating figure for many. The 49-year-old, according to a common allegation, is turning football into a science. Instead of fighting and winning, it's suddenly about the geometry of the game. You follow football matches for years and suddenly someone appears who is said to see the game differently. So also: as yourself. As if you didn't understand the sport.

At the beginning of the year, the sports portal "The Athletic" anonymously quoted someone who had been at Bayern at the same time as Guardiola, saying that Guardiola had "penetrated football so deeply that nobody can follow it".

Guardiola doesn't actually do much to maintain this image. After the Lyon game, he said: "In this competition, tactics are not the most important thing".

Against Lyon, the tactics were decisive.

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Manchester Citys Aymeric Laporte and Lyons Karl Toko Ekambi

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Franck Fife / AP

Guardiola had set up his team more defensively than usual. As in the previous year, at the end against Tottenham, he initially took a cautious approach. He chose three defenders against Lyon's two-man storm. Guardiola said afterwards that his own defense was lacking speed, which he wanted to absorb with additional protection.

Lyon took the lead with the first chance. City missed good opportunities. Then Guardiola broke the chain of three and brought in an additional striker.

Defender Aymeric Laporte played a bad pass before the second Lyon goal, but now the additional defender was missing. Outside Guardiola sank to her knees for a moment. Before the third goal, Raheem Sterling missed the empty goal from five meters.

"Sometimes it wasn't 100% clear what we were doing"

Taken in isolation, the tactical measures were understandable. And yet it seems as if they did not grip the premier class as reliably as usual.

With City he conceded six goals in the 2017 round against Monaco; five against Liverpool the year after, four against Tottenham, now three against Lyon (but in only one game). That gives an average of 2.6 goals conceded per game. Guardiola's career average is 0.81.

In the "Athletic" article from February Guardiola's ex-striker Thomas Müller from FC Bayern said something interesting. The great strength of the coach and his game idea is the ability to extremely dominate weaker opponents. "In the long run, Guardiola is therefore the best coach and his teams are the strongest."

In knockout games, however, the situation is different. "Pep pays a lot of attention to the opponent and their strengths," said Müller. He is torn between adapting to the opponent, especially if the opponent is particularly good, and getting his own way of playing through. "Sometimes it was therefore not one hundred percent clear what we were doing," said Müller.

A team that is constantly winning can be unsettled if they suddenly abandon their style of play. Does that explain bad passes from players who hardly make any mistakes? Misses like Sterling's?

This season, there is also the fact that Manchester does not always win. Guardiola only got a lower average in his debut season in England. For the first time in his career, he did not win an important trophy.

What remained was the hope of the Champions League. The successes in the round of 16 over Real Madrid looked like Manchester was ripe for it. And that, although Guardiola put up unusually, including the 20-year-old Phil Foden as the wrong nine. Complicated. But it worked. Until the end against Lyon.

"One day," he finally said at the press conference, "we might be able to do it: improve and make it through the quarter-finals."

He kept his eyes lowered.

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Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2020-08-16

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