PEP GUARDIOLA
As Bayern Munich boss Pep Guardiola sits in his office this week, it will not be inconceivable to think that at some point he will wonder about the task awaiting him when he takes over at Man City in the English Premier League next season.
It is as manager/coach/trainer that Guardiola seems to have become the SI Unit for measuring successes for young up-and-coming managers. Very unfairly too I feel. Young managers, it seems, are not allowed to fail, learn from their failures and then get better. Guardiola has won titles at his two clubs and at some point with Barcelona it seemed that he was rewriting every record going.
Before he took over, Barcelona had lost the CL semis over two legs to Man United, and in the league they had finished in third place behind Villareal and 13 points behind Champions Real Madrid. In his first season in charge at Barcelona he reclaimed the title with 87 points from Real Madrid and then beat Manchester United in the Champions League final.
In 2012, at the Allianz Arena, Bayern Munich inexplicably lost the CL final to Chelsea on penalties. Twelve months later Juup Heynckes led his team back to the final again and beat Dortmund in the Wembley. Heynckes was to be replaced by Guardiola later that summer.
So Guardiola takes over the German champions, who had won the title by a whopping 25 points and were also European champions. In his first season he retained the title but lost in the semis on aggregate to a Lionel Messi-inspired Barcelona. This season he is on course to retain the Bundesliga while Bayern have qualified for the quarterfinals of the Champions League. All going well.
The Premier League in England is not the most technical, nor is it filled with the world's current best players as much as it was nearly a decade ago. However, it is a unique league. Unique in that fans of even the lowest ranked sides expect their teams to get something from any visiting team irrespective of class, money or league position. It is a league that has a punishing schedule and no winter breaks. It is a league where industry and endeavor from lesser talented players readily bridge the gap between them and their more gifted opponents.
City will present to Guardiola the challenge of managing a team not at the very top and one that does not have many homegrown players in their ranks. He will be managing, or will have to oversee, a turnover of players complete with the difficulties these present. While doing this he will be expected to win the league in his first season, as he has done in his previous two jobs.
Guardiola loves his teams to dominate possession and is known to not be particular about his centre-backs physically. In England, crosses into the box are regular and driven set-pieces are the norm. Also, Man City only have a recent league pedigree, unlike both Barca and Bayern; so clubs will not give in so easily. As Louis van Gaal has found out and Jose Mourinho says every so often, in the Premier league you fight for every point. There is little room for coasting along in a season.
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