{"id":612411,"date":"2026-04-17T07:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/612411\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T07:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:03:08","slug":"guardiola-ready-to-benefit-as-fellow-cruyff-disciple-arteta-strays-from-the-path-soccer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/612411\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardiola ready to benefit as fellow Cruyff disciple Arteta strays from the path | Soccer"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Pep Guardiola was preparing for the challenge of taking on J\u00fcrgen Klopp\u2019s peak Liverpool team at Anfield in February 2021, training that week at Manchester City<\/a> was a little different, according to Oleksandr Zinchenko. Guardiola\u2019s instructions seemed counterintuitive. \u201cGuys, let\u2019s start from the goal-kick, I want you to make at least three or four touches on the ball,\u201d the manager told them. \u201cMost of the teams come to Anfield and shit themselves. They want to play one touch, two touch. \u2018Oh, don\u2019t give me the ball! Oh you take it!\u2019 But you have to play with big balls at Anfield! Big balls! \u2018Give me the ball!\u2019 Demand it! If you need to dribble past two or three players, do it. But play football. I want you to play football.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zinchenko recalls that Guardiola made the same speech before they walked out at Anfield. \u201cTeams coming here are scared. They play one or two touches, and that\u2019s what Liverpool like, because they get the ball back so quickly. I want you to be brave. Play your football!\u201d as Zinchenko puts it in his autobiography, Believe. Admittedly that game came in the midst of City\u2019s record-breaking 21-game winning run that season but was also Guardiola\u2019s first win at Anfield<\/a>, so not dissimilar to the title showdown at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday with Arsenal.<\/p>\n

It remains indicative of the Guardiola mindset, forged by Johan Cruyff\u2019s commitment to create and take risks. It\u2019s difficult to imagine Mikel Arteta<\/a> saying something similar to his Arsenal players on the latest step of their nervous, anguished quest to the finish line. Zinchenko, who has played for Arteta and Guardiola, formed the opinion that his City coach was \u201ccrazy but right\u201d. In recent weeks it seems that theory has been borne out: a slick, relaxed City seem to be relishing chasing down Arsenal, while their opponents, burdened by legacy and history, have stumbled and look uninspired.<\/p>\n

While Arsenal<\/a> struggle for goals from open play, their creative force seemingly overdependent on set pieces, City, with Guardiola\u2019s eclectic tactical mix, are pressing opponents into submission and enjoying football on the front foot. Nothing encapsulates the respective mindsets of the squads more than Rayan Cherki\u2019s joyful (disrespectful?) ball juggling in the Carabao Cup final and Ben White\u2019s reaction, dumping Cherki on the floor: one team totally in the groove, the other lashing out as control of their destiny slips away.<\/p>\n

Pep Guardiola (left) and Mikel Arteta direct their teams during a Carabao Cup final where City played with a swagger Arsenal couldn\u2019t match. Photograph: Tolga Akmen\/EPA<\/p>\n

Guardiola\u2019s ability to accommodate Cherki\u2019s creative idiosyncrasies into this late title charge stands in stark contrast to Arsenal\u2019s more functional forward line. It was instructive that the City manager compared Cherki with another very un-Pep like player whom he also accommodated, Sergio Ag\u00fcero, after the key role he played in victory over Chelsea<\/a> at the weekend. \u201cSergio was not the incredible high-press player but he tried his best and all I ask is that,\u201d Guardiola said. \u201cDo your best and you can do it, because he has another quality. Every player has his own ability.\u201d Indeed, the blossoming of Cherki \u2013 with notable admonishments for rabona crosses and Carabao Cup showboating \u2013 has been key to freeing up City in the home straight.<\/p>\n

And while neither Cherki nor\u00a0Mart\u00edn Zubimendi are likely\u00a0to\u00a0be aware of Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky\u2019s Nobel prize-winning paper on Prospect Theory, both demonstrate intuitive understanding of the basic concepts in their respective form.<\/p>\n

Published in 1979, the seminal paper, which deeply influenced data-led decision-making in sport, showed that human beings suffer from loss aversion when in a favourable position. Thinking becomes dominated by what they could lose whereas, in pursuit, you have a clear target, full focus and less to lose and are thus much more open to risk taking.<\/p>\n

Sir Alex Ferguson might call it Devon Loch syndrome, famously citing the horse that collapsed within sight of the Grand National finish line to bait Kevin Keegan\u2019s Newcastle into their own meltdown in the 1995-96 title race.<\/p>\n

Arteta\u2019s Arsenal look like a team set up not to lose. And it\u2019s not a recent phenomenon confined to this mini slump. Even back in February, in the \u201cgoals from open play\u201d table, City were ranked first with 83% with Arsenal 16th, at 58%.<\/p>\n

\u201cOutcome pressure\u201d is how Martin Fairn of Gazing, the company the All Blacks hired to transform their losing mindset to win the Rugby World Cup in 2011, describes it. Once you start obsessing about the outcome, as Arsenal appear to be, decision making goes awry. \u201cIn the mission simulation training we do with the British army, they give themselves 24 hours to reach a target,\u201d says Fairn. \u201cOne hour in, it all feels pretty relaxed. As they go through the night and get closer to the enemy, there\u2019s more jeopardy and decisions are harder. And if you make a stupid decision 50 yards from the enemy, that is life and death jeopardy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is, how heavy does the context and the associated pressure weigh on your shoulders? And are you diverted and not able to think clearly, or are you able to maintain agile thinking?<\/p>\n

\u201cOutcome pressure limits our ability to think clearly. Either you over-engage \u2013 \u2018we have to fight to win, to save our lives\u2019 \u2013 which can flip over into frantic stupidity, or there\u2019s passivity, where you just freeze and people disappear. They\u2019re playing but they\u2019re off the pitch. You start to just feel the weight of being in the lead. And that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening with Arsenal now. It gets called choking and various things like that. It just means you feel the weight of being favourites because\u00a0you\u2019re closer and closer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is, how do you free up the mentality to acknowledge the significance of the outcome while resetting your attention. The zoom-out moment says we are not where we are by mistake. We\u2019re\u00a0at the top of the league because we\u2019ve competed and delivered results consistently through the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arsenal struggled in the Carabao Cup final and have done since. Are they suffering from \u2018outcome pressure\u2019? Photograph: Tolga Akmen\/EPA<\/p>\n

The twist is, of course, that Guardiola and Arteta go way back, not just to their days together at Manchester City, where Arteta was Guardiola\u2019s assistant, but to Barcelona\u2019s youth academy, which forged them both in the values of Cruyff\u2019s risk-taking, possession-dominant football. Indeed Arteta partly couldn\u2019t progress at Barcelona because Guardiola played in his position and Xavi was the better contemporary.<\/p>\n

One of the few first-team appearances Arteta had was in a pre-season friendly against Hertha Berlin where, as a callow 17-year-old, he came on for Guardiola, the 28-year-old established pro. \u201cWith Xavi, Iniesta and Arteta, everything suggests Bar\u00e7a won\u2019t have problems in this position for the next 20 years,\u201d Guardiola said encouragingly after that game and he wasn\u2019t wrong, even if Arteta wouldn\u2019t feature.<\/p>\n

And where once they both seemed to be inheritors of Cruyff\u2019s legacy of playing football that demanded risk and creativity, it looks as though successive title meltdowns in the face of Guardiola\u2019s City have forced Arteta into a more reductive way of playing. The irony is that this very caution risks being their undoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Pep Guardiola was preparing for the challenge of taking on J\u00fcrgen Klopp\u2019s peak Liverpool team at Anfield…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-612411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}