fuck Harris...
accentuate the positives:
View attachment 82706
The debate is over: Guardiola is the greatest of all time
Incomparable manager has his reward after seven years at City where he has turned himself into a touchline icon
Oliver Brown
Captions:
Passion: Pep Guardiola celebrates City's victory and (below) gives instructions to substitute Phil Foden
All hail the sage of Santpedor. Pep Guardiola, overcome with relief at scratching a 12-year itch to win his third Champions League, can now be considered not just as the greatest manager of his era, but of any.
This perpetually wired character, a man who makes obsessive attention to detail seem less a pathology than a priceless quirk, can finally permit himself a luxurious drag of one of his favourite Cuban cigars, content that his most fiendish quest is fulfilled. To complete a treble in one major European league is a wondrous distinction in its own right. To do it in two almost defies belief.
The "almost" qualifier is necessary, because when you coach a club who have spent north of £2billion during your seven years in charge, anything becomes believable. And yet Guardiola deserves so much better than to be seen as the figurehead for some colossal corporate vanity project. He is the force intrinsic to Manchester City's soul, their spirit, not to mention their astounding success.
Sometimes City's supremacy can struggle to stir the blood. In Guardiola, though, they have one of the incorrigible romantics. He grew up a voracious reader, emulating the example of his father Valenti, whose favourite novel was Don Quixote, , and he even completed a spell at a Catalonian conservatory to see if a passion for music would take hold.
In the end, football has proved the best canvas for his imagination. Just as he elevated his Barcelona team to a standard of sophistication against which all other aesthetes are measured, he has fashioned City into arguably the most elegant side English football has seen. Now, finally, he has his glittering reward.
At kick-off, there was no disguising ing the weight of expectation on
Guardiola, in his all-black ensemble.
ble. Hundreds of camera lenses were trained on him in the dugout, with scarcely a single one for his opposite number, Simone Inzaghi. Such is the prestige he has brought to the role of manager itself. It is not just that Guardiola has appreciably changed the way the game is played, but that he has established himself as a bona fide icon of the touchline, a brooding presence demanding perfection at every turn.
He suffered for his art here, liv- ing every moment with his team throughout a first hour fraught with anxiety. It seemed almost to be a grievous personal affront every time they lost possession, and every time Ederson misjudged one of his usually composed clearances. "Relax, relax," he implored, sensing the pressure was suffocating them.
Whenever do you hear him issue such an instruction? So often City are able to engage cruise control courtesy of early goals, but they appeared harried, rushed, unhappy with how many times they were slipping on the copiously-watered pitch. Scrupulous though Guardiola's planning might be, he had scarcely dared contemplate the jolt of an injury to Kevin De Bruyne. Cue a swift reshuffle, with Phil Foden stepping into the breach, and a furrowing of the manager's brow. At least, with some soaring rhetoric at half-time, he could inject a little inspiration.
Patience: this was the virtue he had extolled for the final. He understood that the longer the match stayed goalless, the more City players and supporters alike would be tempted to panic. But while Italian teams, as he explained, tended to believe they were winning if they kept the scoreline to 0-0, he would entertain no such notion on City's behalf. For as long as they were not losing, he implored his charges to keep the faith. And faith, thanks to Rodri's bullet of a 68th-minute goal, was triumphantly repaid.
Guardiola tends to have little time for any personal laudations. At Bayern Munich, he would scoff at suggestions of a cult of personality, and when asked recently if he could describe his fundamental principles ples of coaching, he shrugged: "Have Lionel Messi in the past. Have Erling Haaland now." It is a glaring case of false modesty. Simply signing a galaxy of stars and hoping they will cohere on the pitch is no surefire prescription for glory, as Chelsea have shown only too vividly. It requires a tactical genius like Guardiola, polishing each player's talents until they sparkle, to make the masterplan come together.
In pursuit of this treble, Guardiola has converted his team to his philosophy of never being satisfied, of always believing that excellence can be enhanced. Nothing escapes his scrutiny. Players arrived here at the Ataturk dressed in identical outfits of white polo shirts and stonewashed jeans, mirroring their manager's penchant for understated chic. Given his habit of exiling anybody he deems overweight - Kalvin Phillips has barely played a minute this season since being accused of carrying excess timber - who can be surprised?
For all that nation-state club takeovers are among the game's less edifying developments, disfiguring the competitive landscape, Guardiola has taken City into territory far beyond where institutions in a similar position have reached. Take Paris St-Germain, who are as much a shopfront for Qatar as City are for Abu Dhabi, but who, over the course of Guardiola's reign at the Etihad, have muddled through a succession of guns for hire.
Bouncing between Unai Emery to Thomas Tuchel, Mauricio Pochettino to Christophe Galtier, they have reached just one Champions League final, which they lost. City's capture of the ultimate prize merely emphasises Guardiola's transformative influence.
Guardiola is an act impossible to follow. City have been in existence since 1880, and almost half the club's trophies have come under his command. What next?
For Guardiola, there is the incentive of chasing the treble, perhaps even the quadruple, next year, but there is a gnawing sense that he will not, having harvested every piece of silverware available, be tempted to extend beyond the two seasons left on his contract.
So City should savour this exquisite moment in time while it lasts. For an achievement of such colossal magnitude is never guaranteed. It is one made possible by an abundance of resources, of course, but it belongs first and foremost to the man in black, to the inimitable, incomparable Guardiola, a true modern genius.
clubelo.com
