It’s official, Pep Guardiola will join Manchester City next season and many changes are coming ahead for the Premier League Squad thanks to the arrival of the Spanish manager.
The 45-year-old is the most winning figure in modern soccer, winning 74.5 percent of games in his career, while only drawing 15.1 percent and just losing in 10.4 percent of the matches. This means that teams under his coaching get an average of 2.39 points per game. Plain impressive.
But we have to understand that Pep had very great advantages when coaching Barcelona and then Bayern. The main two advantages that have defined his successful career are: a certain type of player, and a game style.
During his time in Barcelona, he had both the players and the game style. Not only did he have under his command Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, but he also had the world’s best player, Lionel Messi. Also, most of the team was homegrown and had the La Masia soccer style completely internalized.
This was a perfect combination for Pep’s success in Barcelona, where he won pretty much everything possible: three UEFA Supercups, three Spanish La Liga titles, three Copa del Reys, two Club World Cups, three Spanish Supercups and two UEFA Champions Leagues.
Then came Bayern, a team in which he didn’t have the players he required for his game style, so he had to tweak his system. Of course, he brought in people that could make the job easier. Still, Bayern’s squad was — and still is — way superior than the rest of the teams in Bundesliga.
This allowed not only for Pep’s Bayern to win all the local tournaments, but it also gave him time to adapt his tweaked and improved system. Now, in 2016, we are finally seeing the closest version to Bayern’s top performance.
The thing is, Guardiola will be Manchester City’s next coach, and there he won’t have all the advantages he has enjoyed before. This will be the biggest challenge he has ever faced as a coach.
First of all, the players. Most of the current roster has been brought from away, making it a team with no clear identity. Yes, he has some great players, but they may not be what he needs for his system. As for now, I think the only three that could succeed under Guardiola’s management are Sergio Agüero, Raheem Sterling and Yaya Toure.
Unfortunately for the Spaniard, when Toure found out about his signing, he decided he wanted a transfer out of Manchester City. Toure's position is probably the most important in Pep’s scheme, because is the one that gives positional balance to the whole formation.
Not only his team won’t have a clear style, but he won’t have it as easy as in Bundesliga, because, let’s face it, Manchester City is in no way superior than the rest of the top teams in the Premier League. Time will be against him as well, because he will have to bring in results starting week one.
But Pep is a soccer mind and whether he publicly accepts it or not, he is already thinking of what is he going to do and how he wants Manchester City to play. He has to, just like he did before joining Bayern Munich, when he had very clear ideas of how he was going to takle the challenge.
And probably that is the reason why he decided to take the job. Because in the end of the day he probably wants to prove himself that he can succeed not only when he has superior teams, but that he can turn disappointing (compared to how much money they spend) Manchester City into one of Europe’s giants.
Pep Guardiola will be Manchester City’s next coach, and it will be the biggest challenge he has ever had.
