Guardiola
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Unpopular footballing opinion: Pep Guardiola is a fraud

Ahmed Shah·
BarcelonaManchester City
·1 Comment·

Pep Guardiola is a fraud, and he will remain a fraud until he manages a club with a low-budget and takes them to European glory…

First, let me get all of the things I like about Josep ‘Pep’ Guardiola out of the way because it won’t be a very long list. Pep Guardiola is a graduate of the Barcelona system, he came through their youth setup La Masia and anyone who comes out of their academy is bound to be good and have some innovative ideas. His most high-risk job was as boss of Barcelona B, a team which was languishing in the fourth tier of Spanish football when he arrived. There, as the prodigal son that often came under criticism from the Barcelona hierarchy, he persevered and experimented before coming out on top and finding the winning formula. His philosophy is without a shadow of a doubt one of a kind. Pep Guardiola revolutionised football in 2009 with his Barcelona side.

I still remember the 2009 Champions League final in Rome. Manchester United, being the defending champions, were heavy favourites going in. I remember thinking that there was no way a make-shift Barça backline with Yaya Toure and Gerard Pique as centre-backs and Sergio Busquets, in his first full season at the club, could match up against the United attack of Rooney, Ronaldo, Tevez, Berbatov, and the experience of Ryan Giggs and Michael Carrick in midfield. How wrong was I and how good was Guardiola’s team that night. However, even then at the very beginning of his career, he possessed the luxury to buy and sell at will. This luxury has been a recurring theme through the career of the Catalonian. It is for this reason that for him to truly be one of the best of all-time, he needs to take a smaller team and make them great.

Pep Guardiola’s achievements have come more on the basis of inherited players and unlimited resources rather than adapting to the players he had at his disposal. He took over a world-class Barcelona team in 2008 with Messi, groomed and readied by Ronaldinho, all set to take over from the mercurial Brazilian – and with Iniesta and Xavi alongside him. Guardiola buys the players that he thinks will best fit into the style he wants, whereas managers like Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez have worked on limited resources and turned average players into match-winners.

Managers like the aforementioned duo deserve more credit for bringing together dysfunctional teams and winning European trophies with them. No matter what their style of play was, both managers knew how to bring out the best in their teams. Rafa Benitez won the Europa League (then called the UEFA Cup) one season with Valencia (2004) and then the Champions League the very next year with Liverpool (2005). Mourinho did the same with Porto (2003 and 2004). Rafael Benitez won the Champions League with Djimi Traore starting the final at left-back, while Mourinho pulled it off with the likes of Christian Chivu and Goran Pandev in key roles.

Let’s talk about transfer dealings as well. Guardiola’s biggest signing at Barcelona (Ibrahimovic) was a flop. At Bayern Munich, he spent an exorbitant amount (Vidal, Gotze, Douglas Costa, Benatia, Thiago), dominated the Bundesliga, but failed to win the coveted European trophy. He then took a year’s sabbatical before, surprise surprise, electing to sign with the Sheikhs of Manchester City. City, who went to great lengths to accommodate Pep, had already brought in his former Director of Football at Barcelona, Txiki Begiristain, to work in the same capacity.

At Manchester City, he spent another bucket-load of money (Bravo, Nolito, Gundogan, Danilo, Gabriel Jesus, Ederson, Bernardo Silva, Sane, Walker, Stones, Mendy). Probably the biggest risk Guardiola took at City was showing Joe Hart the door, but even Tony “long-ball” Pulis (no offence, Mr. Pulis) would’ve seen that coming given how far Joe Hart had fallen. Guardiola’s side flopped in Europe in his first season, crashing out spectacularly at the hands of Monaco. In his second season, after having signed all the players he deemed fit for his philosophy, he has won the league at a canter but failed in the Champions League again. The fact of the matter is that you will never see Pep Guardiola do what Claudio Ranieri did with Leicester City.

Pep Guardiola’s career so far is a slap in the face of great managers of the past like Bill Shankly, Jock Stein and Sir Alex Ferguson, who paid their dues before arriving at a big club where they built a local, domestic core for their teams on their way to historic European triumphs. Arsene Wenger gets ridiculed for not winning a European Cup during his 22 year stay at Arsenal but he does not get half the credit he deserves because what he did was not glamorous on the pitch. Wenger transformed a football club, ridding it of its debts and qualifying for the Champions League with the same club for 19 years in a row. When Rafael Benitez joined Newcastle, they were mid-table in the Championship and now the Magpies have secured safety in the Premier League. Benitez could have chosen the safe option and opted to manage a club in his home country, but he strayed out of his comfort zone again.

There are also managers in the world like Mauricio Pochettino, devoid of credit because there are managers like Pep who, by a combination of spending money and inheriting great players, achieve in two years what others plan on achieving in 5-8 years. These are all incredibly under-rated achievements. Admittedly, there is also the ever-changing football climate turning the game a little bonkers – leaving certain circumstances out of either manager’s control.

Money doesn’t make a great manager, but it creates a great team which good managers with a great philosophy capitalize on. With Pep, he knows which club he can have it easier at, where he has the freedom to buy and find a quick formula to success. In five years’ time, or maybe less, I expect to see Pep winning the French Ligue 1 with PSG to complete his set of domestic titles at every club he has managed. Pep only gets the plaudits that he gets because he plays football the way it should be played and, as much as I admire that, it should not be the only metric to measure a top-level manager.

The same goes for Zinedine Zidane – but, maybe, that’s a story for another day…