Guardiola cheats and sweeps in his fifth Premier

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Pep Guardiola knew he was exaggerating when on January 19, after attending Manchester City's comeback against Tottenham, from 0-2 to 4-2, he raised the tone of a message that he had been repeating like a ritual of stings. "There's no energy, there's no passion," he said, pointing to his players. "We reacted after 0-2, just because we lost. But there is nothing. We've had four Premier Leagues in five years... and I see the passion of Arsenal and right now they kill for every ball. We played well, but there's something inside that we're missing."

MNCM. City

1

Stefan Ortega, Manuel Akanji (John Stones, min. 57), Walker, Laporte (Rodrigo, min. 78), Kalvin Phillips, Foden, Sergio Gómez (De Bruyne, min. 77), Rico Lewis, Cole Palmer, Julián Álvarez and Mahrez (Erling Braut Haaland, min. 73)

CHE Chelsea

0

Arrizabalaga, Wesley Fofana, Thiago Silva, Trevoh Chalobah, Enzo Jeremias Fernandez, Azpilicueta, Lewis Hall, Loftus-Cheek (Carney Chukwuemeka, min. 81), Sterling (Nonso Madueke, min. 68), Kai Havertz (Christian Pulisic, min. 85) and Conor Gallagher (Mykhailo Mudryk, min. 68)

Goals 1-0 min. 11: Julian Alvarez.

Arbitrator Michael Oliver

Yellow cards Kai Havertz (min. 17) and Enzo Jeremias Fernandez (min. 65)

Several advisers from Chelsea and Liverpool consulted by this newspaper came to the same conclusion. Guardiola, they insisted, was doing a goldsmith's job to get tares to his squad and place it in a state of maximum alert. "If Arsenal led the Premier League for months it wasn't because City's players were satiated after winning four titles; but Guardiola deceived them; he used psychological trickery because he wanted to get a point of attention and regularity in the players' partnerships with newcomers Haaland and Alvarez," says an Arsenal paid prospector. "Guardiola knows from experience that players always have doubts; when they go to bed they spin over the coach's words and think, 'What if we're shitting her?' This produces fear, fear of losing the contract, fear of failure, or going to the bench, and the reaction is usually constructive."

"My job is to increase the aggressiveness of the players," Guardiola confessed on Sunday, after beating Chelsea 1-0 and lifting the Premier League Cup at the Etihad. "I have to use the media to send messages to them. You help me a lot!" he said at the press conference.

At 52 years old and after winning 11 leagues in 14 seasons in Spain, Germany and England, Guardiola sharpens like no one the sensor that measures collective mental exhaustion. City were showing signs of fatigue a year ago. He was walking on an increasingly narrow ledge when the coach used the last summer market to transform the team. As the first months of the championship passed, he did not seek to raise the passion of his players, but to get them to pay more attention to accelerate the process of adaptation to the precision instruments recently introduced in the machinery: Haaland and Julián Álvarez.

Guardiola celebrates Premier League title with Manchester City employees and players.Martin Rickett (AP)

Immersed in the concert of midfielders and passing midfielders, the ability of the two signings to repeat first-class clearances with a frequency rarely seen from Villa and Eto'o was equivalent to multiplying City's dynamism and attacking power in all orders. If the psychological manipulation of Guardiola injected adrenaline, the unmarked Haaland and Julián Álvarez doubled the dose of stimuli and solutions for a team that had been incurring episodes of jamming for years due to an excess of rhetoric in the passes. You just had to fit the pieces together to increase the depth. To ensure that with great effort, De Bruyne, Grealish, Silva, Stones, Rodri or Mahrez played their nines in all possible situations. Faced with increasingly closed defenses, learning was not always easy in the first months of the championship, even if everyone was motivated. The boys needed a bit of uncertainty. Guardiola used the spurs with the mastery of a witch doctor. It scared them.

The coach was followed by a platoon of captains convinced of the need for inflammation: Gündogan, Bernardo Silva or Rubén Dias joined the coaching. Some delivered harangues. Dias repeated the model before a match: "Let's show ourselves out there how much we want to win the Premier League again! When they think we are tired, we will feel like doing it again. That's how we'll get big!"

"I'm very old"

The excitement helped the players connect on the field. The consequence was a gale of chances against the tightest defences City have ever encountered. Without hardly throwing centers, the shots were reproduced everywhere. Eight between the three sticks against the wall of Madrid in the second leg of the Champions League semifinals, were the perfect sample. Haaland's 36 goals in 34 league games are a record in a season. "This is unreal!" the Norwegian repeated on Sunday, after beating Chelsea and lifting the cup. "Unreal...! I expected to win the Premier League, but I didn't expect to score so many goals. Now we're going to party all night!"

"The players can do whatever they want," muttered Guardiola, asked about the celebration on club television; "I don't, because I'm too old."

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