Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City: The first steps of a rejuvenation

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This version of Pep Guardiola has no room for worry. His face growing ever more bronzed from the Boca Raton sun, the Manchester City manager is living by a mantra of freedom and relaxation.

Wish to go to Miami after training? Crack on. Barbecue out back with the wives and kids? Fill your boots.

Golf, beach, swimming; however City’s players want to find joy, Guardiola’s laissez-faire approach to their time in the U.S. is keen to accommodate.

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It has been noticeable just how refreshed Guardiola seems, despite having virtually no break between the end of the most turbulent season of his managerial career and this Club World Cup starting.

Eulogising over South American fan culture, delivering an impromptu birthday message to Michel Platini, fawning over Matheus Nunes’ conversion to right-back so passionately he may as well have been talking about Cafu.

Not even concerns that this Club World Cup could jeopardise their Premier League season?

“I try not to think about it, otherwise I would be so anxious,” he said. “People do their work best when they enjoy.”

Guardiola’s demeanour is a far cry from winter, at the peak of his team’s four-month crisis, when he seemed to wear each and every error across his brow.

He looked like a defeated man. Stressed, dejected and, for perhaps the first time in his career, unsure whether he had the answers.

It seemed like his decision to sign a new two-year contract in November may have been a misjudgment, that his ability to keep refreshing and motivating had finally succumbed to human vulnerability.

Yet, here he rocked up in the U.S., a man completely rejuvenated. Then, on Thursday his team transformed, too, hammering Juventus 5-2 with a performance so confident and slick, it was as if that crisis never happened.


Guardiola gets his point across during City’s 5-2 win over Juventus (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)

For 17 years as a manager, Guardiola has continually posed new questions about the sport. But after unparalleled dominance in the Premier League and the toughest period of his career, finding the energy and inspiration to conjure up a new vision of what his City team, perhaps in his final act as manager, must surely have been more testing.

“When you win something, it is over and you start again. When you lose, it is the same,” he said.

“We made a good level (at the end) and qualified for the Champions League. The club brings in three new players, everything is new, so let’s go.

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“I try to understand the players a bit better, improve yourself. Don’t think too much about tomorrow and the future, and we will see.

“The main target is not to tell the players but (for them) to visualise the way we play in training sessions. They feel this is what we want and the path where we can be competitive.”

Two years ago, Guardiola claimed that the reinvention of this City team was not always part of a grandmaster desire to push the boundaries. “It’s because otherwise, I get bored,” he said.

“Always doing the same thing for eight years would be very boring. That’s the first thing. And secondly, when you do something and it goes well, they watch you and create an antidote. If you go too inside, they close in. If we open up the field too much, they’ll open it up more.

“Anything we do and they respond to us. We have to respond again. The third reason is the players we have: what specific qualities they have and when they adapt best to the way you want to play.”

Guardiola recognises that the Premier League is becoming increasingly athletic, with more and more teams adopting man-to-man pressing.

He is adapting his team accordingly and that was evidenced against Juventus on Thursday. The main themes were forward runs, direct passes into the striker and an in-possession formation that shapeshifts so often, it feels pointless to lay out a starting XI in any specific order.

Guardiola has always traditionally asked for his two wingers to provide the width for the team, but that started to change at times last season, with the full-backs hugging the touchline.

It looks like there is going to be constant variation of that on both sides, with Rayan Ait-Nouri at left-back. The Algerian inverted into midfield in the third minute of the game, with Jeremy Doku holding width on the left and right-back Matheus Nunes high and wide on the opposite flank, with Savinho tucked inside.

A few minutes later, City were in a variation of a 2-3-5 build-up, with Ait-Nouri the furthest forward player and Doku and Savinho playing as two No 10s behind Omar Marmoush, as was their starting position for most of the first half.

Within these changes of shape, one overarching principle that was back with a vengeance was the presence of runners in behind the Juventus defence.

Last season, there was not enough of it — perhaps partly due to City’s defensive struggles in transition making them wary of overcommitting too many men, but it made them easier to contain.

There were constant attempts to stretch the Juventus back line, whether it was isolating Marmoush to run into the channel when Ederson has the ball, or Savinho going beyond Marmoush…

…or Tijjani Reijnders and Bernardo Silva breaking from midfield.

Reijnders excelled against Juventus and this was a key part of his game, with City’s second goal coming from a late third-man run that saw Matheus Nunes’s cross lead to a Pierre Kalulu goal.

The Dutch international has added running power to a midfield that was lacking legs. But often City will come up against a low block, which is a challenge he is confident these runs and dribbles can overcome.

“The spaces are very small, so you have to be very secure in those situations and patient,” said Reijnders.

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“With the qualities we have with the wingers and the midfielders, we can always outplay a player. Those are things we have to use if we are playing teams who drop like this.”

City consistently played directly into Marmoush’s feet when under pressure, with the running of Reijnders right across the midfield proving key to breaking the man-to-man press as he was able to escape his marker and offer an option to create a transition opportunity.

Rodri, who made his first start in nine months, says he believes City are “showing that this team has another face” after making changes to improve on what went wrong last season.

“We are trying to find out the best way this team works, trying to fix the new signings and find what is the best way of playing,“ said the Spanish midfielder.

“In two weeks, you cannot guess anything. We are testing and I think this tournament is an incredible opportunity to compete, but also show what we are going to show next season.”

(Top photo: Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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