Circus Europe: Pep Guardiola of Manchester City: The Servant of the Monsters

How do you actually feel among monsters, Señor Guardiola? The man once had a reputation as football’s good conscience, gifted with an aura that made one think his people played the game purely for the love of the game and pocketed the money as a pleasant side effect.

Pep Guardiola was considered the eternal lord keeper of the seal of aesthetically demanding football. When the Manchester City Football Club he managed shot the reigning Champions League winner Real Madrid 4-0 out of the Etihad Stadium a few weeks ago, a little uneasiness mixed in with the worldwide admiration for all the skill of the game. The Corriere dello Sport, which tends towards martial images, filled its front page with the headline cast in bold red letters: “Sono Mostri”, they are monsters!

High finance has turned the European football circuit into a competition where anyone can play, but it’s always the same ones who win, usually from Spain and England, but sometimes from Germany and Italy as well. The last underdog win by a side outside the four big leagues was in 2004 and it was called FC Porto, but who knows. The final party is this Saturday in Istanbul, Inter Milan and Manchester City duel, but not even the Calcio patriots from the Gazzettas and Corrieres expect an open game. “In the face of this team, Inter can only tremble,” fears the “Gazzetta dello Sport”.

Success has its price. In the past 15 years, the sheikhs from Abu Dhabi have invested around two billion euros in transfer fees alone in their Manchester City project. “They have the best team in the world. No matter what it costs, they just do it,” says Jürgen Klopp from Liverpool FC, who are also not less well off. Guardiola is allowed to put together his squad regardless of annoying financial details.

When he wished for the Norwegian Erling Haaland last spring, he got him as a matter of course, with a sky-blue bow around his blonde mane.

In the seven years of his career, the Catalan has put his sheikhs in the virtual showcase of five championships and eight triumphs in all kinds of English cup competitions. But the most important trophy is still missing. Twice Guardiola has already won the handle pot offered for the Champions League, but that was at a different time with a different club, and wasn’t Guardiola different too? Back then, in Barcelona? When he joined the Camp Nou 15 years ago, he still had hair on his head and wasn’t interested in big names. The novice coach let world stars Deco and Ronaldinho know in a first official act that they should please look for new clubs.

The first game in Numancia was lost 1-0 and after the second, a 1-1 draw with Santander, Guardiola’s time at Barcelona seemed to be coming to an early end. Until the kicking virtuoso Andrés Iniesta knocked on the door to the coaching room and Guardiola said: “Don’t worry, señor. We are on the right path. We’ll win everything.« That’s what happened, in the cup and league and Champions League, with Rome beating Manchester United 2-0 in the final. Two years later, Guardiola repeated the feat again against Manchester United, this time at Wembley. And a year later he was already gone, on his way to New York for a sabbatical.

Critics claim Guardiola left his soul in Barcelona, ​​after which it was all about money and titles: In Munich, where he failed three times in the semi-finals of the Champions League and claimed that three years were enough, after that the intensity suffered. So why is he going into his eighth year in Manchester soon? It could hardly be due to the charm of the northern English rain, but rather to the endlessly bubbling petrodollars from Abu Dhabi. Guardiola no longer values ​​the romance of the game and prefers to breed monsters.

Anyone who argues in this way remains on the surface and overlooks what he is criticizing, namely Guardiola’s soul. He didn’t leave Barcelona as an oversatiated hedonist, but because the pressure was just too great, especially for him as a Catalan in his heart club. And in Munich he only found perfect conditions at first glance. On the second, it was anything but optimal with the luminaries Rummenigge, Hoeneß or Sammer, who, in case of doubt, knew everything at least as well as Señor Pep and always had the boulevard on their side.

Guardiola is a politically minded person fighting for Catalonia’s detachment from central Spain. He should be aware that the sheikhs of Manchester don’t have the best reputations. But they don’t talk the football coach Guardiola into the line-up, they didn’t even order him a reunion with Lionel Messi, which was ideal for improving his image, when he was cheap two years ago after the ugly separation from Barcelona. The Argentinian world star’s game, which was initially related to himself, did not appear to be system-compatible. So he ordered the creative and at the same time team-oriented free spirit Jack Grealish from the club management.

Philipp Lahm once said to Die Zeit: “Pep Guardiola appreciates his players and neither rises above them nor any 4-3-3 or 3-5-2 system. He’s her friend, he’s her servant.’ But none of them is bigger than the game Pep Guardiola has dedicated his life to and which he develops at the Manchester laboratory with his own obsession. No matter how penetrating the rain falls on the north of England. Yes, Pep Guardiola feels comfortable around monsters, as long as they are synonymous with perfect soccer players. And the “Corriere dello Sport” with its bold red letters must have had nothing else in mind.