Pep Guardiola

El Flaco

Active member
Recently, L'Équipe published an interesting article about Pep's background & the tactical setup done during his spell for us.

Found some translations of extracts from the article elsewhere

[…] Such expectations towards a manager was a rare sight. The 21 trophies in seven seasons already made him one of the greatest football manager in history. A miracle-maker, with its share of fantasies and misunderstanding. His Barca was a paragon of performance and aesthetic. However, even if his fans saw in Guardiola an artist, those who disliked or failed to understand Pep painted him as an ideologist, a slave to the tiki-taka; this boring succession of short passes that do not adjust to any kind of context, oppositions or objective. Like all kind of caricature: it is a mix of fiction and reality.

In fact his years in Bayern showed that Pep did not tried to replicate his Barcelona's success model. Under his command, the Bavarian team was versatile, and could adapt multiple tactical options within the same match […]

[…] Guardiola seeks to build the play from behind, in order to apply this play Pep relies on the numerical superiority theory. When a forward presses, the building of the play would require two central defenders. If two opponents press, then we will play with three etc.

This is the first step. But the core of Guardiola's thinking is to find the free man. It is impossible to comprehend Pep's football vision without understanding this concept.

What is a free man? It is a player that has enough space to move forward with the ball. Nothing really complicated here. But the catch is that everything imagined by Guardiola is centred around this obsession: to create free men, because a free man equals to a numerical superiority of one against zero. The absolute numerical superiority that must be created everywhere progressively as the ball is moved forward […]
 

MagIX

Senior Member
Guardiola hails Marcelo Bielsa as best coach in the world

http://en.as.com/en/2017/02/20/other_sports/1487620345_858847.html

"My admiration for Marcelo Bielsa is huge because he makes the players much, much better," said Guardiola.

"Still, I didn't meet one guy, a former player from Marcelo Bielsa who speaks no good about him.

"They are grateful about his influence on their careers in football.

"He helped me a lot with his advice. Whenever I speak with him I always feel like he wants to help me."

Bielsa's three league titles in his native Argentina and an Olympic gold medal leading his homeland in 2004 are the sum of his major honours in the game, but serial trophy winner Guardiola believes that is a blunt way in which to measure his mentor's influence.

"It is important for me to say this about Marcelo because it doesn't matter how many titles he had in his career," the Spaniard added. "We are judged by that – how much success we have, how many titles we have won.

"But that is much less influential than how he has influenced football and his football players.

"That is why, for me, he is the best coach in the world. I am looking forward to seeing him in Lille next season.

"I am pretty sure his influence on their team, their club and their players will be huge – amazing. I am pretty sure of that."
 

El Flaco

Active member
Pep and his Manchester City were knocked out from Round of 16 by Monaco after 1-3 away loss tonight.

Monaco went through to quarter-final due to away goal advantage (6-6 over two legs).

[tw]842127426276712449[/tw]
 

JamDav1982

Senior Member
Certain he was telling City players to stay in the corner and waste time after celebrating.

Never seen Pep do that and have such little trust in one of his teams to play the game before.
 
The thing is many players in that City team are mental midgets, who choke under pressure and barely show up in big nights. It's clear Aguero time is over tho. This season is pretty much a flop for Pep, he needs to prepare for next season and make sure he make good signings, especially since they need 2 FB, 1 CB a GK and 1 DM, because that's going to be probably make or break season. It's quite interesting how Mou and Pep are struggling nowadays.
 

Devils

Senior Member
Man does Pep needs to do something about his defensive tactics.

Every CL elimination he has had since leaving Barca has been defensive horror show. Real/Barca/Atletico/Monaco...4 years his teams have been comically exposed defensively.
 

xXKonan

Senior Member
Man does Pep needs to do something about his defensive tactics.

Every CL elimination he has had since leaving Barca has been defensive horror show. Real/Barca/Atletico/Monaco...4 years his teams have been comically exposed defensively.
You know what will fix that? spending 100 Million more on Wingers and forwards! that will solve everything! :pep:

Joking aside, It surprised me that City didn't get any Fullbacks last summer. I think everyone pretty much knew it was a massive weak point but they didn't even bother to fix it. they still have problems in regards to CBs as well.

Defense is one area you don't neglect I mean it's cool and all having a nice functional Midfield and Dynamic attack but if the defense is pretty much nothing but swiss cheese you won't get far.
 
He's not that bad as people claim when it comes to defensive tactics, not good, but not bad either. His problem is at Barca he had Puyol in the back commanding that line that kept everyone at bay, he didn't have that kind of leadership at BM or City, tho he had Lahm, but not as good as Puyi in terms of leadership. At City a lot of defensive problems came from individual players.

@Konan agreed I guess them getting to the semi-final last year and finishing in top 4 they kind of got over confident or siply they didn't find FB that Pep wanted he does need specific type of FB ala Alves.

Injuries to Gundo and G. Jesus didn't help either. Tho Gundo until proven otherwise seems like he'll be regular in hospital bed.
 

CuleLife4Life

Active member
Someone mentioned he had Puyol at Barca as well as Abidal, Pique,etc. Honestly, Pep deserves endless accolades for what he did here but that may have been his peak as a manager.

Bayern who play in a 1 team horse didn't do anything in Europe under him. In fact they went backward after making the final for like 2/4 years straight.

City was always going to be a huge challenge but with the amount of money he spent, the results have been shocking. I think he''ll continue on coaching them and may end up with a league or FA Cup in a year or 2 but I don't ever seen him recreating his Barca success.

Funny thing is he is so adamant he won't ever go back to Barcalona. He made a statement like that again this week. We're his best chance at real success in European football.
 
That's an extremely high bench mark if you expect him to recreate Barcelona success as it won't happen. Carlo won two CL with Milan after that he went to Chelsea, PSG and then finally RM where he lifted his third. Mou has won the CL with Porto and Inter and has failed to do that with RM and Chelsea, it also doesn't seem like he'll be doing that anytime soon with United either.

In fairness to him had either Aguero/Sterling finished their 1 v 1 chances they may have gone into the next round. This result may not be bad for Pep it may give him a wake up call. Even if he got by he wouldn't have beaten Barca/BM/RM, so his side stills needs a lot of work before they get anywhere even close to 3.

To me he still one of the best in the business.
 

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