A pleasant scene: moms and dads, boys and girls stand along a bumpy road at the entrance to the football club’s training base. Every once in a while, an expensive car pulls up, the driver rolls down the window, and the kids look inside to get a closer look at the idol and ask for his autograph. This is what the day-to-day life of Burnley fans, who secured access to the Premier League, looks like.
Judging by Sean Dyche’s experience, a pub will soon appear in the city named after Claret’s new coach, Vincent Kompany. In parallel, in the Premier League, Mikel Arteta and Arsenal fought for the championship with Manchester City, although it would be too daring to imagine it even in the fall. In Spain, Xavi in his first full season in charge of Barça won La Liga by a wide margin over the giants of Madrid.
How nice Guardiola defeated Real Madrid with City:
Guardiola kept two of his promises against Real Madrid. His Manchester City is perfect
Pep is a guru
It does not take more than an attempt to remember what unites this trinity. All of them, in one way or another, owe their coaching prowess to Josep Guardiola, they all preach the “Pep philosophy” in their approach to the profession. It would be insulting to think that the coaches who worked with him are simply trying to copy the style of the Spaniard to the smallest detail, because each of them has an individual style of work. But the influence of the former Barcelona and Bayern coach should not be underestimated either.
Vincent Kompany
Burnley head coach
“I have been lucky enough to work with many good managers, I have learned something from all the managers I have played with and from all the clubs I have been with. Mikel also had many good specialists in his career, like Xavi. But there is nothing surprising in the fact that we learned from Pep: among all the coaches he can be distinguished in a separate category.
Along the same lines, Xavi responded to Atlético’s question. This is not surprising – under the leadership of Pep, the Spaniard became part of one of the best teams in history and won everything possible. “I considered him the best coach in the world even before the first trophy, and for me he is still number one. I don’t want to compare ourselves: he had an incredible career, and I’m just starting, ”the Barcelona coach is modest.
Josep Guardiola and Xavi
Photo: Alex Caparrós/Getty Images
Xavi’s coaching journey began at Al-Sadd in Qatar, where he showed the players his ultimate obsession from the start. “He always gives us possession stats and always finds possession to be too low. His ideas were very clear from day one: he wants the ball to be with us and for the opponent not to touch it, ”described the philosophy of Javi Santi Cazorla, a former Arsenal midfielder and the Spanish team.
Manchester’s rival is also a fan of Pep
Arteta sees his time with Guardiola a little differently: he was already working with Pep as a coach, not as a player. The City manager has a fan base of the highest calibre, even within Manchester: United manager Eric ten Hag watched Pep’s work at Bayern for two years while he managed Bayern’s reserves.
“I got to know his approach up close and learned a lot. Football in Germany has changed thanks to Pep, the whole league has become different under the influence of his ideas. I watched almost all the training sessions and saw how he transferred his philosophy to the field, ”said the Red Devils coach.
Pep also pays a lot of attention to style:
How coaches choose clothes. Tracksuit, t-shirt or jumper: everything matters
It wasn’t just about tactics. Ten Hag highlighted Guardiola’s contagious enthusiasm, which made the players give their all even in training. The Dutchman also noted Pep’s complete dislike of convention and openness to experimentation: for example, the Spaniard first used David Alaba and Philip Lahm as reverse full-backs. By the way, Arteta did the same at Arsenal with Alexander Zinchenko and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Kompany with Burnley uses the same trick in the attacking phase.
Guardiola teaches courage without concessions
Another striking feature of Guardiola is his utter intransigence. At City, his first move was to sack club graduate and England’s top goalkeeper Joe Hart, who failed to live up to Pep’s standards. Another coach pushed one of the dressing room leaders, Yaya Toure, into the background, and Sergio Agüero took him out of the coach at press conferences: the Argentine could not understand the coach’s philosophy.
Sergio Aguero and Josep Guardiola
Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
In Barcelona, Guardiola was just starting out, but range and courage were with him even then: on the first day of work with the blue maroon main team, he told the bosses that he wanted to get rid of Ronaldinho, Deco and Samuel Eto. ‘either. “We will move on without them. It’s time to restart,” said the brash Spaniard. Eto’o eventually helped Guardiola win the Champions League, but he left the following summer.
Guardiola has always had grit, the same can be said of the managers who compete with him for Premier League and FA Cup trophies. Arteta made it clear who was in charge at Arsenal when he decided to part ways with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Ten Hag, already at the stage of familiarization with Old Trafford, calmly resolved the problems with Cristiano Ronaldo’s outbursts, ignoring the huge ego of the Portuguese and the number of Ballon d’Ors.
Erik ten Hag and Josep Guardiola
Photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images
Guardiola raised a sect of workaholics with the name of Cruyff
Kompany has learned from Guardiola and Arteta’s coaching staff in recent seasons at City, taking long absences with injuries and speaking to them about why they use certain tactics. And all three are united by manic addiction to work. Kompany regularly works 14-hour days, and one of his colleagues, in the best sense, called the Belgian “the most intense person I’ve ever met.” It’s funny: the same words describe Pep’s assistants.
Kompany noted that his success is not just Guardiola’s magic, Vincent draws inspiration from everyone from Mancini and Pellegrini to Klopp and Simeone. And Arteta says that he owes his vision of football mainly to Johan Cruyff. Kompany is also a fan of the Dutch national team legend and even hooked up his assistant Craig Bellamy. Everyone seems to have heard of Pep’s cult of Cruyff ideas.
You can read more about the Burnley championship here:
Guardiola’s new heir in England. How Kompany got Burnley into the Premier League ahead of schedule
Arteta has spent five years in the background under Arsene Wenger’s orders, but, curiously, there are almost no top-level coaches among the French’s former players. The same can be said of Sir Alex Ferguson’s former footballers, if we consider coaches with experience in the fight for the most important English and European trophies.
During Pep’s time at Barcelona, José Mourinho was his main antagonist. A line in ten Hag’s biography perfectly describes why Guardiola’s legacy in football history far exceeds that of the Portuguese. Eric used chess terminology: “When it comes to tactics, we are not talking about José Mourinho, he always plays with the black pieces.”
