For Pep Guardiola, life goes on as usual at Manchester City
New York Times|
Dec 17, 2017, 11.30 PM IST
The Premier League would be different. Everyone said so. Pep Guardiola might have arrived in England in 2016 with three Spanish and three German titles to his name, but those honours seemed to come with an asterisk.
He had always managed heavy favourites: Barcelona and Bayern Munich. He had triumphed only in leagues that looked like oneor two-horse races. Barcelona have just one serious, consistent rival: Real Madrid. Bayern not even that.
Trying to succeed at Manchester City would be an altogether more challenging proposition, he was told. England could offer five other clubs that would regard themselves as genuine contenders for the championship, with the money and the ambition and the clout to stand up to Guardiola and to City. There would be no plain sailing in the professed most competitive league in the world.
Retired players, news media columnists and even agents knew it: Apparently "the grandfather" of Dimitri Seluk, representative of Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure, "could have won the league" with the Bayern team Guardiola had inherited. And, of course, his old nemesis Jose Mourinho knew it, referring with his typical sledgehammer subtlety to Germany as a country where "the kit man can be coach and win the title."
That was not the case in England. It would be in England where football found out exactly how good Guardiola was.
Almost halfway through his second season, Guardiola's Manchester City have taken 52 points from an available 54. They have won 16 games in a row, the first of a number of records they are on course to break this season. And they have now faced all five of their notional rivals, dispatching each in some considerable style. Tottenham - handsomely beaten, 4-1, in Manchester on Saturday - was the last of them, and by no means the easiest. For a few minutes at the start of each half, Mauricio Pochettino's team appeared to be able to cope with City. It did not last.
The same has happened to Liverpool and to Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium, neither truly able to lay a glove on the league leader. Though the scores have been less impressive, the road victories against Chelsea and Manchester United were equally emphatic, City simply too slick, too quick, too strong for supposed peers.
Last week, a statistic started to float around the Premier League's ether that Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool are all closer, in terms of points, to the teams battling relegation than to the top of the table.
Guardiola, during his first season in England, grew to resent just how frequently he was asked whether he would now, finally, agree that the Premier League was the toughest in the world. Eventually, he snapped, lapsing into something of a sarcastic sneer - "Congratulations, guys, it really is the toughest," he said - but for a long time, he demurred.
"I do not think going to the Bernabeu, to Bilbao, to Seville is so easy," he said, or words to that effect, whenever the question came up, which was most weeks. He has always been aware of the sense in England that anyone could have won, and easily, with Barcelona and Bayern Munich; of the simmering undertone that all of his achievements somehow did not quite count.
His view was that winning La Liga and the Bundesliga was not simple, but it was made to look so by two outstanding teams. Instead, the excellence of his sides distorted the image of all the others. The presence of something extraordinary made everybody else appear extremely ordinary indeed.
England, he was told, would be different.
Everyone said so. It has taken a little longer than he might have liked - and, as he always makes a point of highlighting, nothing is secured yet - but Manchester City is starting to challenge all of that established thinking.
He had always managed heavy favourites: Barcelona and Bayern Munich. He had triumphed only in leagues that looked like oneor two-horse races. Barcelona have just one serious, consistent rival: Real Madrid. Bayern not even that.
Trying to succeed at Manchester City would be an altogether more challenging proposition, he was told. England could offer five other clubs that would regard themselves as genuine contenders for the championship, with the money and the ambition and the clout to stand up to Guardiola and to City. There would be no plain sailing in the professed most competitive league in the world.
Retired players, news media columnists and even agents knew it: Apparently "the grandfather" of Dimitri Seluk, representative of Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure, "could have won the league" with the Bayern team Guardiola had inherited. And, of course, his old nemesis Jose Mourinho knew it, referring with his typical sledgehammer subtlety to Germany as a country where "the kit man can be coach and win the title."
That was not the case in England. It would be in England where football found out exactly how good Guardiola was.
Almost halfway through his second season, Guardiola's Manchester City have taken 52 points from an available 54. They have won 16 games in a row, the first of a number of records they are on course to break this season. And they have now faced all five of their notional rivals, dispatching each in some considerable style. Tottenham - handsomely beaten, 4-1, in Manchester on Saturday - was the last of them, and by no means the easiest. For a few minutes at the start of each half, Mauricio Pochettino's team appeared to be able to cope with City. It did not last.
The same has happened to Liverpool and to Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium, neither truly able to lay a glove on the league leader. Though the scores have been less impressive, the road victories against Chelsea and Manchester United were equally emphatic, City simply too slick, too quick, too strong for supposed peers.
Last week, a statistic started to float around the Premier League's ether that Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool are all closer, in terms of points, to the teams battling relegation than to the top of the table.
Guardiola, during his first season in England, grew to resent just how frequently he was asked whether he would now, finally, agree that the Premier League was the toughest in the world. Eventually, he snapped, lapsing into something of a sarcastic sneer - "Congratulations, guys, it really is the toughest," he said - but for a long time, he demurred.
"I do not think going to the Bernabeu, to Bilbao, to Seville is so easy," he said, or words to that effect, whenever the question came up, which was most weeks. He has always been aware of the sense in England that anyone could have won, and easily, with Barcelona and Bayern Munich; of the simmering undertone that all of his achievements somehow did not quite count.
His view was that winning La Liga and the Bundesliga was not simple, but it was made to look so by two outstanding teams. Instead, the excellence of his sides distorted the image of all the others. The presence of something extraordinary made everybody else appear extremely ordinary indeed.
England, he was told, would be different.
Everyone said so. It has taken a little longer than he might have liked - and, as he always makes a point of highlighting, nothing is secured yet - but Manchester City is starting to challenge all of that established thinking.
