7 of Pep Guardiola’s greatest crimes against football: ‘A disease in the game’
Pep Guardiola is undoubtedly one of the greatest managers in the history of football.
Not only has the Catalan won countless silverware at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City but he’s made an indelible mark on the game. Guardiola’s influence on football hasn’t been welcomed by everybody though, with many preferring football in the olden days before he changed it forever.
We’ve identified seven of Pep Guardiola’s most egregious footballing crimes.
Killing football
We don’t entirely agree with Gary Neville here – but he’s certainly articulated an increasingly prevailing view among supporters disillusioned by Guardiola’s tactical influence.
“It’s a Manchester derby,” a fuming Neville concluded, having stomached one of the most sterile matches of the Premier League season as City and United played out a goalless draw at Old Trafford.
“It should have more blood, thunder, risk, and courage involved in playing the game… It looks like it’s Sunday afternoon and they’re going to go for a roast dinner together now.
“I get what he [Ruben Amorim, United manager] is saying about it being that point in the season, with City and United being in a difficult moment.
“But this robotic nature of not leaving our positions, being micro-managed within an inch of our lives, not having any freedom to take a risk to go and try and win a football match is becoming an illness in the game, it’s becoming a disease in the game.”
We’re sure Sky Sports are thrilled with one of their figureheads describing modern football as diseased. How much is a subscription, again?
2021 Champions League final
We could have gone for several examples of Guardiola”overthinking” his line-ups over the years – pick out any of his XIs in the latter knockout stages of the Champions League and you’re bound to find a perplexing selection or two.
There is no better illustration of big-brain Pep getting it wrong than the 2021 Champions League final against Chelsea.
Rodri watched on from the bench that night as an unused substitute. Yes, that’s future Ballon d’Or winner, best-midfielder-in-the-world Rodri.
Still, at least Guardiola had veteran battle axe Fernandinho to call upon. The Brazilian might’ve been winding down his twilight years but he was still dependable.
Wait, what? Fernandinho on the bench too? No DMs in a Champions League final, Pep? Have you gone mad?
Ilkay Gundogan featured at the base of midfield, Raheem Sterling was shoehorned in as an extra attacker, City’s usually on-point pressing structure looked disjointed and Chelsea – inevitably? – ran out 1-0 winners.
Oh, Pep.
Kalvin Phillips
To be fair, Guardiola might not be entirely to blame for this one. Phillips was never going to usurp Rodri at the base of Man City’s midfield.
The midfielder hasn’t got his career back on track out on loans at West Ham and Ipswich, and his last season at boyhood club Leeds was severely hampered by injury.
Maybe his form was always destined to drop off a cliff. It’s not the first time that’s happened to one of Marcelo Bielsa’s favourite sons.
Phillips’ decline has been so sharp that it’s easy to forget he was such a revelation as Bielsa’s newly-promoted Leeds finished ninth in their first season back in the Premier League, while he barely put a foot wrong in England’s run to the Euro 2020 final – voted the Three Lions’ Player of the Year, no less.
You just get the sense that he never really stood a chance under Guardiola, and there was no way back after the manager publicly chastised Phillips for being overweight early on.
“I’m sorry,” responded Guardiola. “I do apologise to him. I’m so sorry.”
An awkward fit from day one. Things might have been so different if he’d made a different move back then, or – better yet? – stayed where he was.
Jack Grealish
Phillips was a great player on his day, but you’d never say he was a joy to watch.
But Grealish definitely was – undoubtedly one of the most entertaining players in the country.
He played an important, oft-overlooked role in City’s 2022-23 treble, but it’s safe to say that the £100million mega transfer hasn’t quite worked out as planned.
Watching Grealish in Guardiola’s highly systematised approach nowadays is just sad. The football equivalent of Randle McMurphy getting lobotomised in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
What good is a vibesman without the vibes?
Tottenham were consistently linked back when Grealish was tearing up the Championship, and you sense that they – once a very happy home to Paul Gascoigne, Dimitar Berbatov and Gareth Bale – would’ve been a better fit for his more maverick talent.
QUIZ: Can you name every player Pep Guardiola has signed for £10million+?
‘So So Good’
You know the scene.
It’s 2018. Manchester City are fourth on Match of the Day after sleepwalking through another 6-0 victory over Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth that barely felt like a contest.
Guardiola’s assessment in the post-match interview?
“Wow, guys. Wow. You have no idea. Bournemouth are so good. So, so, so good.”
Do us a favour, Pep. It would feel more respectful if he’d just called them a bunch of chumps.
Convincing every manager they can play his style
“The Barcelona team of Pep Guardiola was the one that intrigued me the most,” wrote Russell Martin in The Coaches’ Voice.
“I remember watching them against Manchester United in the 2009 Champions League final.
“United were so dominant in England, and here was this team that made them look so ordinary, so average. It was incredible.
“Guardiola’s Manchester City are still my favourite team to watch now. People always say you need the best players to play that way, and he has had the best players at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and now City.
“But you still need to convince the best players to run, to stay in their position and wait for the ball – to drop their ego and do certain jobs for the team.”
That’s all well and good. That influence worked well enough for Martin’s reputation as a fledgling coach in the Football League, and was effective enough to see Southampton promoted via the play-offs.
But sometimes you have to recognise the reality of the level you’re playing at, the limitations of your players, and whether more pragmatism might be a more realistic route to collecting points.
Martin is far from the only case. Teams all the way down to non-league level nowadays go for a Guardiola-influenced play-out-from-the-back style. And it works well enough for plenty of them.
We feel dirty admitting this, but sometimes old-school dinosaurs like Richard Keys might actually have a point.
There are myriad examples of teams where Pepball doesn’t work. From Vincent Kompany’s Burnley to Luke Williams’ Swansea. Or – dare we say it – Man City in 2025?
Jardigans
F*ck it. We’ve teetered on the brink of going all ‘proper football man’ throughout this piece and now we’re going in two-footed.
This one might technically not be a ‘footballing’ crime – but it might be his most nefarious influence on the game today.
Have you seen the state of Scott Parker this season?
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