Pep
Pep Guadiola likes to give his players solutions to break down the opponents defence. As summed up one of
his former players at Bayern Munich Thomas Muller after they crushed Roma 7- 1 “ Guardiola has basically
told us exactly what Roma’s weaknesses were and how to exploit them ” . The tactical ploy was to overload
the left hand side with his explosive players like Bernat , Alaba, Gotze and Lewandowski. Then after they
overload the left they switch over to Robben who is particularly deadly at one on one situations.
Usually when he arrives at the club he solely focuses on stamping down his style of play which is a version of
cruyffs total football. Pep refers to his mentors Garry Kasparov, Juanma Lillo, Marcelo Bielsa who is always on
the look out to improve their knowledge . His philosophy on tracking his teams progress isn’t much so based
on success or failure on the field. It is based on how much the team has learned from victory or defeat.
Nobody understand why he is unhappy after his team gives another A grade performance, because his
obsessed by the smallest of details. He tries and see results as rational judgements. Many great minds calls
the success ‘the imposter’. Gary Kasparov : “I call it the threat of success. When you win you create the illusion
that everythings fine and there’s an enormous temptation to focus solely on the positive result rather than all
the things that went wrong (or could have gone wrong). We al want to celebrate a victory, not analyse it. We
go over and over that moment of triumph until we start thinking it was inevitable... Complacency is a
dangerous foe and can lead to you dropping your guard, missing opportunities and making mistakes. It’s a
kind of paradox. Success and satisfaction are our ultimate objectives but in the short term they can create
negative patterns of behaviour that destroy our chance of great success and deep satisfaction. ‘’
Guardiola has always worked hard to improve his strategical thinking , it was wasn’t fully developed when he
arrived at Bayern Munich. His strategy exists of three components which is :
- The playing model
- The game plans
- The culture of the team
He prefers pressing the oppents high up on the pitch dominating the play. He always tries to accomadate the
players at his disposable trying to mold them into a superior footballers with a good understanding of his
brand of positional football. At Barcelona he had Xavi , Iniesta and Busquets at his disposal. They played a
completely different brand of total football, with slow passing and slow build up. The Barca players always
looking like they were teasing the opponents into a trap. With a explosion at the end when Messi tries to
inject pace. At Bayern munich they play the ball much faster up the field with diagonal passing utilising their
fast and dangerous wingers Robben and Ribery. When they arrive in the final third of the opponents half
they try and create one on one situations. It’s not a mere coincidence that his teams build up the play so
accurately, everybody has to play their part in positioning themselves in a structured compact unit when
they build up the play.
At Bayern the players were in a way given the freedom to develop a particular style that suits themselves, or
to develop a type of chemistry or cohesion. Like when Thiago Alcantra dropped into a falls left back
position so that he can have a better view of play and the field. Alaba , Coman and Thiago had a passing
triangle going which they would play really agressively . It’s all played with Peps methodology kept in mind.
Planning is done game to game keeping all his essentials and beliefs in mind. He scribbles alot of notes and
material then he narrows it down to the bare minimum. Then he tries to transfer what he has in mind to the
players, nobody understands the game the way he does.
While at Bayern he made a couple of new discoveries like playiing Kimmich at centre back, Lahm playing in
midfield, Boatengs improved passing. All world class managers have the qualities to bring out the underlying
creativity of great players to make them truelly world class if you look at the like of Mourinho, Ferguson,
Ancelloti, Cruyff only to name a few. Theres many more to name over the course of the centuries, we’ve seen
many great innovators of the game. If you look at how they prepare