The inner secrets behind Pep Guardiola’s football revolution

He was Pep Guardiola. This was 2005 and Sharkey got Guardiola a trial with Stuart Pearce’s City. He arrived on a budget airline, stayed at an airport hotel and mixed with the lads – albeit, in passing drills in training, he was so much the boss that it was almost painful to watch.

At the Etihad Stadium he took in City’s season opener in the league, a dreadful stalemate with West Bromwich Albion, during which, as Sharkey recalls, “It was literally just David James launching it.

“Pep got stopped from going into the directors’ box because he was in a woolly jumper and jeans, but he was OK,” the agent adds. “The biggest thing throughout that week was how down to earth he was. I’ve met a lot of people in football, and managers are usually good at projecting something, but with him it was just like talking to a mate.”

In the end, Guardiola returned home. City offered him only a six-month contract – give me a year, he’d said, and I’ll move over with the family – and stuck with Joey Barton and Claudio Reyna in midfield. Pep thanked everyone for the opportunity, having told Pearce: “If you want someone just to fight, maybe not, but if you want to change the way you play, I’m your man.”

Guardiola came back to City in 2016, but the protagonist of Pol Ballus and Lu Martin’s brilliant 2019 book, Pep’s City: The Making of a Superteam, is one who spiritually hasn’t strayed far from Catalonia.

Guardiola is described driving from his luxury apartment in central Manchester to the City Football Academy with Radio Cataluna playing on his car radio. He dines in Spanish restaurants, including the Catalan one that he, City’s chief executive Ferran Soriano and director of football Txiki Begiristain opened in King Street. And on his office wall is a maxim he scrawled in Catalan the day he moved in: “Primer es saber que fer. Despres saber com fer-ho!” ("First you have to know what to do. Then you have to know how to do it!")

However, what’s fascinating about this season is how “English” some of Guardiola’s football has become. Four powerful defenders, a big No 9, balls in behind and, as Gary Neville notes, crosses into the penalty area from a team once obsessed with delicate cut-backs. Before Guardiola came to the Premier League he was warned by Xabi Alonso: “You have to adapt to the second ball” and he didn’t really know what Alonso meant.

The second ball (ie the contest for possession when the ball is loose after a challenge) was something he kept talking about with bemusement during his hit-and-miss first season in the Premier League, but now, often through the incredible positioning of Rodri, City are masters of it. And who has won the second-highest percentage of aerial duels in the 2022-23 Premier League? City. (Arsenal’s total is the lowest.) Who has conceded the fewest and scored the third-most set piece goals? City.

On Friday, Guardiola waxed lyrical about how much he has come to love the English game. “English football belongs to England and I didn’t change anything, honestly,” he said. “Yesterday (Saturday) I watched [the Sky Bet League One play-off semi-final] – Sheffield Wednesday v Peterborough. 4-0 down [after the first leg], then 4-0 up, then extra time and penalties – in my mind that can only happen in England. Here the respect for the lower divisions is hats off. How many were there? 33,000? And crazy after [losing the first leg] 4-0!

“This is England and this is why it is unique. That is why it is so special and that is why I am a long time here. I love it,” he enthused.

Yet this, the march to his fifth title in six seasons, is also built on the principles he imported. At essence, the football is still Cruyffian and borne from repetition on the training ground of exercises like seven v seven, plus three (players in the middle) drills to promote possession and positional play. In interviews down the years, I’ve discussed with several of Guardiola’s former Bayern Munich players his ability to teach the game.

This from Alonso: “To hear his ideas has been a special experience. He likes to control every aspect. The smallest thing can make a big difference – whether you pass to a left foot or right foot.”

This from Jan Kirchhoff: “I was a player who had worked with amazing coaches in Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel and this guy just told me, ‘Change your shape to the pitch a little bit, your shoulder needs to face a little different, and touch the ball with this foot rather than the other one.’ Suddenly the game made more sense.”

This from Philipp Lahm: “Pep is the epitome of a 24/7 coach. In bed, eating dinner, always football, football. It’s an unbelievable character trait and through it he elevated us to a new level.”

The Premier League’s 115 charges for alleged financial breaches – denied by City – cloud perceptions and Guardiola is lavishly resourced, but spending is not the root of his success. Scorers in the 4-0 Champions League semi-final win against Real Madrid included Julian Alvarez and Manuel Akanji, bought for pounds 14 million and pounds 15 million, respectively. Akanji was offered to several Premier League clubs, all of whom passed, before Guardiola saw something and signed him.

When John Stones transforms to almost a box-to-box No 8, when Kyle Walker renders Manuel Akanji a National League player, when Ilkay Gundogan arrives as a second striker, when Bernardo Silva plays seemingly 12 positions at once – like we saw vs Real – you appreciate how Guardiola applies his intellect to football.

Domenec Torrent, his former assistant, said: “The secret of Pep is he works the same if he plays the best team in the Champions League or one from the fifth division in the cup. He [regularly] spends ten hours a day in the facility to try to analyse the opponent.” The day before matches, as others are going home for the evening, he locks himself in his office, puts on music (often Oasis, Carla Bruni or the Catalan band, Manel), burns some incense and watches videos of the opposition. Then waits for ideas to come.

On his desk is a statue of his former Barcelona manager Johan Cruyff and on the walls are messages from his children, lines from This is the Place by the Mancunian poet Tony Walsh, and a blank space, so he can scrawl thoughts in black marker pen. “When a flash of inspiration comes . . . that instant I know, for sure, that I’ve got it. I know how to win the match . . . it’s the moment my job becomes truly meaningful to me,” Guardiola confided to a journalist close to him, Marti Perarnau.

But none of the coaching or thinking would work without man-management. He has had Gundogan’s loyalty since being there in hospital with him when a terrible injury threatened the midfielder’s City career in his first season. He has had Kevin De Bruyne’s attention since saying, at their first meeting: “Kevin, listen, you can be a top-five player in the world. Top five. Easily.” De Bruyne was shocked. “But when Pep said it with so much belief it changed my whole mentality,” he revealed. Yet a spat with De Bruyne, when the Belgian played a blind pass to no one against Real, showed he’s not always the “loving coach” Kirchhoff describes.

Since Yaya Toure, in an emotional interview after leaving City in 2018, accused Guardiola of having “problems with African [players]”, the Catalan has rebuffed Toure’s attempts to apologise, even though Toure, at one point, would go to London hotels where he knew City would be staying to try to grab his former coach for peace talks. He has dropped Walker, Stones, De Bruyne and Phil Foden at different points.

“The thing he can do that other managers can’t is he can just not play you,” a source close to a City player said. “The squad is so good that if your levels drop, you know you’re out of the team and might not get back in for four weeks.”

The source continues: “Pep’s not dropping one-liners around training. He’s berating them because that pass wasn’t at the tempo he wanted.” But he attests to the loyalty the squad feel towards their boffin-martinet. Guardiola is generous in giving players days off after good performances – often two at a time so they can travel somewhere – and this trust in them is reflected in also allowing them to leave for away games as late as rules allow, to maximise their family time.

At a point when Foden had some sorrow in his life, he was at home when the buzzer for his gate sounded. There was Guardiola, who gave him a big hug and said, “Just you train and play like who we know you are and you’ll be OK.” Until that point, Foden wasn’t fully sure Guardiola even liked him.

Guardiola says he hasn’t changed English football but that’s modesty. From next season, the Premier League will contain three managers who have worked under him – Mikel Arteta, Vincent Kompany and Erik ten Hag – and disciples like Roberto De Zerbi and, if they get back in jobs, Brendan Rodgers and Graham Potter.

As Wayne Rooney (another admirer) has observed in these pages, Guardiola’s influence is so great he has even altered how sides play in England’s lower leagues, where possession play has never been more important.

One of the first EFL managers to really cite Guardiola’s influence is Michael Flynn, who evolved how his Newport County side played after meeting City in the FA Cup in 2019. Listening to Flynn – now at Swindon Town – talk about Guardiola is insightful. “Pep’s come to Newport, the pitch was poor, he sat down with me, spent time before the game – and we keep in touch now. He’s rang me at home and I’m like, to my wife, ‘Look, Pep Guardiola is calling me!’ And she’s, ‘Yeah, but you always speak to him.’ I still get a thrill seeing his name flash up on the phone.

“My youngest boy, Samuel, is five, has long hair and loves Erling Haaland. I sent Pep a picture of him in his Haaland kit and Pep knows me and my older boy are Liverpool fans – so he sent a message saying happy birthday to Samuel and that the Manchester blue looks better on him.”

Flynn, 42, is the type of detail-loving young coach Guardiola has spawned. “Honestly, the guy is a magician,” he says. “He’s constantly testing himself, trying to improve. I want to be the best version of me and Pep inspires me to try.”

A colleague once asked Guardiola about some contentious refereeing decisions that went against City in an Arsenal game. Guardiola refused to be drawn, so he asked again and Guardiola shut him down. But after the press conference there was a tap on the shoulder: “Pep wants to see you.”

The journalist was taken to the corridor outside Guardiola’s office and the manager explained it was nothing personal – he just didn’t want to criticise officials. With shining eyes and tactile enthusiasm, Guardiola was grabbing his shoulders and pushing and pulling him to demonstrate how Rob Holding had manhandled City players at set pieces. “But I’m not going to complain,” Guardiola repeated. “Cruyff told me I had to build a team so good it took officials out of the equation.”

He has. He tends to take everything out of the equation, in the end. Doubters, opponents – and any foolish notions English football wasn’t for him.

Originally published as The inner secrets behind Pep Guardiola’s football revolution