Pep's biggest challenge this season is, how to make the team stronger with a goalscorer like Haaland?
It may seem easy: you take a team that creates a lot of chances, you add a fantastic finisher up front and win every game. Well, in reality it's not easy, because they are various trade-offs in moving from a system that won you 2 consecutive titles and made you the best in Europe defensively and offensively to a new system of playing with a superstar striker at the end of most attacks.
The problem for Pep won't be tactical but psychological: how to maintain the unity and spirit of the squad when you have a player who gets much more attention from the media than the other players? How to make sure that the team will be more important than any star, and that the players will give everything for the team when one of them will be praised much more than the rest? It's a big challenge as Pep's last season at Barca showed: Messi broke individual records (73 goals!) but Barca won nothing big.
Think the transition from City from the last two seasons to Haaland City will feel a bit frustrating at times (Newcastle, Palace, Villa, Dortmund...) But hopefilly it will end up with a City team for the ages. Pep was a hero in that a strikerless team won back to back titles and scored most goals in Europe last season. But Pep will be an anti-hero if he fails to win big trophies with Haaland. The better the players, the stronger the pressure to succeed. It may seem an easy challenge from outside, the reality is it's difficult to manage a squad full of stars. Tuchel managed to stay only 20 months at Chelsea...Mourinho was finished after two years at every big club he managed. It's a very, very difficult job to win titles at the same club for many seasons.
It may seem easy: you take a team that creates a lot of chances, you add a fantastic finisher up front and win every game. Well, in reality it's not easy, because they are various trade-offs in moving from a system that won you 2 consecutive titles and made you the best in Europe defensively and offensively to a new system of playing with a superstar striker at the end of most attacks.
The problem for Pep won't be tactical but psychological: how to maintain the unity and spirit of the squad when you have a player who gets much more attention from the media than the other players? How to make sure that the team will be more important than any star, and that the players will give everything for the team when one of them will be praised much more than the rest? It's a big challenge as Pep's last season at Barca showed: Messi broke individual records (73 goals!) but Barca won nothing big.
Think the transition from City from the last two seasons to Haaland City will feel a bit frustrating at times (Newcastle, Palace, Villa, Dortmund...) But hopefilly it will end up with a City team for the ages. Pep was a hero in that a strikerless team won back to back titles and scored most goals in Europe last season. But Pep will be an anti-hero if he fails to win big trophies with Haaland. The better the players, the stronger the pressure to succeed. It may seem an easy challenge from outside, the reality is it's difficult to manage a squad full of stars. Tuchel managed to stay only 20 months at Chelsea...Mourinho was finished after two years at every big club he managed. It's a very, very difficult job to win titles at the same club for many seasons.
