{"id":266843,"date":"2026-01-31T08:55:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T08:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/266843\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T08:55:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T08:55:12","slug":"the-day-english-football-changed-10-years-on-from-manchester-city-naming-pep-guardiola-pep-guardiola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/266843\/","title":{"rendered":"The day English football changed: 10 years on from Manchester City naming Pep Guardiola | Pep Guardiola"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t quite without fanfare but when Manchester City announced, 10 years ago on Sunday, that Pep Guardiola was to be their manager<\/a> from the next summer, it was a banal, bald press release that brought English football the news that would change it for ever. That was a simpler time, pre-Brexit and Donald Trump\u2019s presidency, and before centre-halves in League Two would split wide for the keeper to pass out from the back to the holding midfielder, dropping in to receive the ball as a false 9 came deep to link with full-backs stepping into midfield.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about coaches adapting\u00a0to English football,\u201d said Jordi Cruyff in 2016 as Guardiola began to make his mark on England. \u201cIt\u2019s about English football adapting\u00a0to the new things of the game.\u201d And yet that typical Cruyffian confidence looked like hubris when Guardiola\u2019s Manchester City got hammered 4-2 by Leicester<\/a>, 4-0 by Everton<\/a> and experienced Champions League\u00a0humiliations at Barcelona<\/a> and Monaco in that first season.<\/p>\n

Ten years on, you have to admit Cruyff Jr was, like his father, Johan \u2013 Guardiola\u2019s inspiration from their time at Barcelona \u2013 100% right. We now know that English football revolves around Pep rather than the other way around. \u201cAll credit to Pep,\u201d Jordi told me recently while recording a forthcoming episode of the It Was What It Was podcast, and I reminded him of our conversation. \u201cIf you look at the Premier League nowadays you see a lot of teams playing from the back, taking all kinds of risks, and every cross in the box there are six or seven players trying to finish it. Even smaller clubs that historically had a different way of playing are more open, [commit to] crazy attacks and just go for it. When Pep arrived he had that romantic way of playing and I think a lot of people didn\u2019t expect the level of results he would get. They introduced the Bar\u00e7a style to Manchester City<\/a> and City brought that to the whole of the Premier League. But what helped Pep a lot was patience of the ownership [of the club], that they weren\u2019t emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, it is probably worth reminding ourselves of that first season, when Guardiola, having been massively hyped, won nothing and struggled to make the top four. Before he arrived at City he had lost 42 of his 408 games (10.3%) at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, where, between the two clubs, he won six league titles, two Champions League titles, four domestic cups and three Club World Cups. In his first season in England he lost 10 of 56 (17.9%), allowing an entire panel of pundits who had asserted that Lionel Messi couldn\u2019t do it on a wet, windy night in Stoke a smug smile of vindication.<\/p>\n

Perhaps peak Pep defiance (conceit?) came after his side were played off the park by Leicester with a long-ball, counterattack style in December 2016, with two late City goals making the 4-2 scoreline more respectable than it was in reality. Guardiola was challenged about his side failing to win a tackle in the first 35 minutes. He didn\u2019t quite laugh in our faces but preached with the self-assurance of a missionary abroad, wholly unconcerned about local belief systems. \u201cI\u2019m not a coach for the tackles<\/a>,\u201d he replied. \u201cIt\u2019s another aspect of football but in the end we\u2019re not going to win or lose for the tackles.\u201d He sniggered at the end of his reply, as though bewildered by our basic lack of understanding.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve never seen anything like his intensity,\u2019 says Guardiola\u2019s fellow manager Neil Warnock, who has become a regular visitor at Manchester City\u2019s training ground. Photograph: Tom Jenkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Eighteen months later, when Guardiola\u2019s team had amassed 100 points<\/a> in his second season and were celebrating the first of six Premier League titles, I reminded him of that exchange and asked whether he had realised his response was slaying a sacred cow of the English game. \u201cI understood completely,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is cultural, because the way we play in England is with more physicality and more long balls, which creates these kinds of actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet by then he was also keen to be more conciliatory. \u201cOf course it\u2019s necessary to win tackles,\u201d he said. \u201cTackling is a part of the game. People think it\u2019s just pass the ball, possession of the ball. No, no, no. We speak a lot about how we have to defend. But my concern was that we hadn\u2019t lost against Leicester because we didn\u2019t win the tackles. We didn\u2019t win for other reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, though English football has changed beyond recognition, Guardiola also changed after that first season. The signing of Ederson in 2017<\/a> allowed him to incorporate a long pass over the press as an alternative to playing out; playing four centre-halves in his backline in 2022-23 chimed with the more robust path football was taking; and Erling Haaland and Gianluigi Donnarumma are not players you can envisage thriving in the Bar\u00e7a of 2011.<\/p>\n

Nothing could illustrate more the coming together of two cultures over the past 10 years than Guardiola\u2019s unlikely bromance with Neil Warnock, high priest of the long ball, set piece and putting it in the mixer. Warnock, 77, has become a regular visitor to the City training ground and Guardiola has even had him address his players. \u201cHe\u2019s been the best manager in my lifetime, the most influential,\u201d said Warnock. From a man who took on Sir Alex Ferguson, Jos\u00e9 Mourinho and Ars\u00e8ne Wenger it\u2019s quite the compliment. \u201c[I thought that] even more so when I went to the club for a couple of days. I didn\u2019t know he was that intense!\u201d<\/p>\n

Pep Guardiola\u2019s team, with the likes of Kyle Walker, Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden, produced scintillating football in winning six Premier League titles. Photograph: Tom Jenkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Having conquered England, Guardiola has been keen to reach out to the Premier League\u2019s tactical founding fathers. \u201cIt started when Kyle Walker told me: \u2018The gaffer would like you to come and have a chat,\u2019\u201d says Warnock, who had taken Walker on loan from Spurs while at Sheffield United and QPR. \u201cSo I went across to a game and we had a good chat and it just stemmed from there really.\u201d Guardiola was so enamoured he attended An Evening with Neil Warnock when the show went to Manchester, bringing an assistant and going backstage after.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason why I say he\u2019s the best?\u201d said Warnock. \u201cHe still picks my brains. He picks everyone\u2019s brains. He\u2019s taking in information all the time; you can see his mind working. He always wants to learn. When he\u2019s on the training ground it\u2019s not just a matter of going out there for half an hour. I\u2019ve never seen anything like his intensity.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is something wistful in Guardiola\u2019s relationship with Warnock, a throwback to a forgotten era the City manager yearns for. When he asked Warnock to address players such as Kevin De Bruyne, Haaland and Bernardo Silva, the former Sheffield United manager didn\u2019t hold back. \u201cI said to them: \u2018I bet you\u2019re glad I\u2019m not your manager. I\u2019d have you kicking the ball from over there to over here,\u2019 pointing at the 18-yard box. And everyone laughed their heads off. After training Pep said: \u2018Please come have a coffee.\u2019 And he told me: \u2018The way you talked to the players, nobody does that nowadays. There\u2019s no humour. It\u2019s all data, computer, stats.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The irony is that this Pep anniversary coincides with the first concerted push back against the Cruyffian tactics<\/a>, with set pieces, long throws and direct football proving the antidote to City\u2019s domination. Warnock feels a degree of vindication, baffled as to why it has taken coaches so long to realise that trying to match Guardiola played into his hands. \u201cI\u2019ve been asking that question for about three or four years. What people have to realise is they can\u2019t match Pep\u2019s City in passing around the back. I said to Russell Martin [at Southampton]: \u2018You can\u2019t do that.\u2019 And when he went to Rangers, everyone who comes to Ibrox sits back, [so] you have to move it quicker. In the Premier League it became: \u2018This [Pep\u2019s way] is the way football is.\u2019 That\u2019s a load of rubbish, that! Football is about winning games. It\u2019s like Amorim and the Celtic guy with the bloody clipboard. I\u2019m looking at that and thinking \u2018Oh my goodness.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But Guardiola and his philosophy may not be done quite yet. Warnock believes he will ape Sir Alex Ferguson and want at least one more title before calling time on the colonisation of English football. \u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019ll call it a day now until he\u2019s shown people he is the best. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s one of those who will call it a day when he\u2019s not doing well. I think he\u2019s one of them who will do well again, show people why he\u2019s the best and then call it a day.\u201d It may not quite be the resounding battle cry of \u201cTen more years!\u201d, but there may be one last blast of Johan Cruyff\u2019s football<\/a> before Guardiola leaves, having changed us utterly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It wasn\u2019t quite without fanfare but when Manchester City announced, 10 years ago on Sunday, that Pep Guardiola…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-266843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}