Flicking through my Twitter feed and Guillem Balague (I follow him specifically to get annoyed by him) has a tweet “why Pep has chosen Bayern (and why some of us thought that was a strong possibility)” and a link to a longer article/post by him on it. Balague was tweeting on Monday and Tuesday that there was absolutely no truth in the “Guardiola to Bayern” rumours.
Decent article from James Horncastle here
It’s often said that the foundations of Barcelona’s success under Pep Guardiola were laid in 1971 when the club appointed Rinus Michels. He arrived in Catalonia shortly after leading Ajax to their first European Cup with a 2-0 victory over Panathinaikos at Wembley. No one had ever won the trophy in the way his team had, playing under the tenets of a new philosophy: Total Football.
Barcelona asked Michels if he could replicate it at the Camp Nou. There was scepticism. Ajax was intrinsic to Michels. He had come through its academy, played for the club throughout his on-field career, later becoming its coach and from then oversaw and benefited from the development of one of the finest generations of players the game had ever seen. Many wondered if he could operate outside these conditions, without the same players.
It’s worth reflecting on that time again principally because following Guardiola’s decision to end to his sabbatical in New York this summer to replace the retiring Jupp Heynckes as coach of Bayern Munich next season, he is facing almost the same line of questioning as Michels did more than four decades ago.
What really captivates the imagination is precisely how much of what Guardiola achieved at Barcelona is transferable elsewhere. Because not all of it will be, most notably, the shared cultural identity and experience, the trust he had with his Barcelona players, the respect his past at the club commanded and how all of this led to the formation of a bond that was so organic and so unique that it cannot for one minute be underestimated as one of the main reasons behind their success.
It will be one thing applying the same ideas at Bayern as at Barcelona, but establishing the same level of understanding promises to be another altogether. The problem Michels initially encountered, as outlined in his book “Teambuilding,” was “everyone expected Barcelona to play like Ajax did. They did not realise that such a team building process takes years to develop.”
You get the impression that Guardiola has, to some extent, understood this. He has signed a three-year deal with Bayern rather than the 12-month rolling contract he had at Barcelona. By sorting out his future in advance, has availed himself of time to prepare for the job, learn the language, study up on Bayern, watch the current team and its players, speak to them in private, form his own opinion of them and decide what needs to be done.
The transition, according to prevailing wisdom, will be relatively smooth from one FCB to another. Bayern and Barcelona have certain things in common in how they’re run and structured as clubs and how they play as teams. From that point of view, Guardiola’s decision makes considerable sense.
Much has been made of how Bayern are second only to Barcelona in the possession-and-pass-completion ratings across Europe’s top five leagues this season, to say nothing of how Louis van Gaal - the former Ajax and Barcelona coach who mentored Pep - supposedly laid a lot of the groundwork for him during a spell at Bayern between 2009 and 2011.
<div style="margin-left:10px;] <div style="margin-left:10px;]<img src="http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2013/0121/soc_g_michels_gb1_200.jpg" alt="soc_g_michels_gb1_200.jpg]Getty ImagesRinus Michels helped transform the game when he moved from Ajax to Barcelona in 1971. Can Pep Guardiola do likewise at Bayern Munich? <p>That’s all well and good of course, ideal you might think, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that Guardiola will take Bayern to the rare if unprecedented levels his Barcelona reached. Time to reflect on Michels again.</p> <p>He replaced Vic Buckingham at Barcelona just as he had at Ajax in 1965. And just as Guardiola should benefit from van Gaal and Heynckes’ legacy in terms of possession and pressing, he inherited a team that was similar to his previous one, at least in terms of set-up if not entirely in style. “… Because Barcelona had played with typical out-side forwards under the guidance of the English coach Vic Buckingham, the choice for the 4-3-3 system was not too difficult to make,” Michels wrote.</p> <p>Still, Michels, taking charge of a team that had finished level on points with champions Valencia the season beforehand - missing out on the title only because of an inferior head-to-head record - initially found it hard at Barcelona to reproduce the beautiful football he’d developed at Ajax.</p> <p>Ten league games into his first campaign, Barcelona had lost five, drawn three and won only twice. They were in the relegation zone, out of the Cup Winners’ Cup after losing a quarterfinal to Steaua Bucharest and later exited the Copa del Rey at the same stage.</p> <p>Although Barcelona rallied to finish third, the season and their standard of play - regardless of the Fairs Cup they won in a playoff against Leeds United - was a disappointment. Michels’ second season witnessed an improvement in position - Barcelona were runners-up to Atletico - yet the promise of Total Football was still yet to be fulfilled. Far from setting La Liga alight, they scored only 41 goals in 34 league games.</p> <p>“It was harder to find the right player for the right position,” Michels admitted. “After a process of many years at Ajax to find the correct balance, it was more difficult than expected to achieve this at Barcelona. We succeeded defensively, however, the individual qualities were disappointing concerning the build-up and the attack.”</p> <p>One assumes this will preoccupy Guardiola as well, because at Bayern he will not have Xavi, Andres Iniesta and most significant of all, Lionel Messi. How will he fare without them?</p> <p>It bears remembering that it was only when Barcelona signed Johan Cruyff in 1973, reuniting Michels with his Ajax protege, that the Camp Nou began to see something resembling Total Football. A 14-year wait for a La Liga title was ended that season, as Barcelona won the championship by 10 points playing some brilliant football and scoring 75 goals. Cruyff was the difference. Without him, they were a different team, as you would suspect today’s Barcelona and Guardiola team would be in Messi’s absence.</p> <div style="margin-left:10px;] <div style="margin-left:10px;]<img src="http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2013/0121/soc_g_gaal_gb1_200.jpg" alt="soc_g_gaal_gb1_200.jpg]Getty ImagesLouis van Gaal mentored Guardiola at Barcelona before moving to Bayern Munich, where van Gaal was coach from 2009-11. <p>It’s often the case that managers looking to get their message across will bring in players who know their philosophy, chapter and verse. For instance, van Gaal recruited his former Ajax players Michael Reiziger and Winston Bogarde in his first season at Barcelona in 1997-98, then the de Boer twins and Patrick Kluivert in his second, not to mention fellow Dutchmen Philip Cocu and Bolo Zenden.</p> <p>As a result, he was able to bring his influence to bear and implement his ideas much quicker. It was a fast track to success. Barcelona won La Liga back-to-back, although one perhaps wouldn’t argue that they were ever as fluent or as good as van Gaal’s first and perhaps only great side, Champions League winner Ajax in 1995.</p> <p>Still, buying one outstanding player or a small selection - maybe one, two or three of those - who understand your system and can educate new teammates, could well be a model Guardiola follows or at least considers at Bayern, even if he might be reluctant to take players away from his former club.</p> <p>Give or take a few modifications, Michels and van Gaal essentially share the same philosophy, the origins of which can be found in Ajax. Yet, as explained above, they took two different approaches to its implementation at Barcelona. It will be interesting to see which one, if any, Guardiola takes at Bayern.</p>Hat-trick for Marco Reus and 10-man Dortmund are leading Eintracht Frankfurt 3-0 in the 2nd versus 4th clash. Ilkay Gundogan is a joy to watch. 
Impressive stat: Bayern went 4 hours and 28 minutes without conceding a shot on target until the 77th minute of this weekend’s game.
For those not watching Celtic tonight there’s a Nationalderby in the cup between Bayern and Dortmund tonight. Hummels will be out for Dortmund, Robben may start again for Bayern after impressing at the weekend. This may mean more to Dortmund than Bayern given the league title is realistically going to Bavaria but with Guardiola in attendance there’s a few markers to be laid down by Bayern players.
Lewandowski of course may feel he has a point to prove to potential employers.
[quote=“Rocko, post: 741986, member: 1”]For those not watching Celtic tonight there’s a Nationalderby in the cup between Bayern and Dortmund tonight. Hummels will be out for Dortmund, Robben may start again for Bayern after impressing at the weekend. This may mean more to Dortmund than Bayern given the league title is realistically going to Bavaria but with Guardiola in attendance there’s a few markers to be laid down by Bayern players.
Lewandowski of course may feel he has a point to prove to potential employers.[/quote]
i think bayern are going all out to win every competition they are in this year after finishing with nothing last year…
[quote=“Rocko, post: 741986, member: 1”]For those not watching Celtic tonight there’s a Nationalderby in the cup between Bayern and Dortmund tonight. Hummels will be out for Dortmund, Robben may start again for Bayern after impressing at the weekend. This may mean more to Dortmund than Bayern given the league title is realistically going to Bavaria but with Guardiola in attendance there’s a few markers to be laid down by Bayern players.
Lewandowski of course may feel he has a point to prove to potential employers.[/quote]
any notable defenders i should look out for here Rocko?
mickee - look out for Neven Subotic - he’s Nemanja Vidic’s not quite as good former international team-mate.
I would have told you to also keep an eye out for Bayern Munich’s brilliant young Austrian left back David Alaba - bear in mind however that he doesn’t play for a top international team so you’re better off ignoring him.
[quote=“Sidney, post: 741995, member: 183”]mickee - look out for Neven Subotic - he’s Nemanja Vidic’s not quite as good former international team-mate.
I would have told you to also keep an eye out for Bayern Munich’s brilliant young Austrian left back David Alaba - bear in mind however that he doesn’t play for a top international team so you’re better off ignoring him.[/quote]
cheers sid
i like having players from serbia involved, there is always a lovely bit of racist niggle and a bit of an edge when they are on the pitch ,
its an awful pity they didnt qualify for the euro u-21 that wil be played here in June
[quote=“Sidney, post: 741995, member: 183”]mickee - look out for Neven Subotic - he’s Nemanja Vidic’s not quite as good former international team-mate.
I would have told you to also keep an eye out for Bayern Munich’s brilliant young Austrian left back David Alaba - bear in mind however that he doesn’t play for a top international team so you’re better off ignoring him.[/quote]
he was brillaint last year in champs lge against madrid…think he missed final after getting booked when ball hit his arm for madrid peno early on…
[quote=“mickee321, post: 741996, member: 367”]cheers sid
i like having players from serbia involved, there is always a lovely bit of racist niggle and a bit of an edge when they are on the pitch ,
its an awful pity they didnt qualify for the euro u-21 that wil be played here in June[/quote]
I didn’t know until I looked it up a few minutes ago that Sinisa Mijhalovic is the current manager of the Serbian international team. The Serbs clearly looked at the hugely successful tenures of Gheorghe Hagi as manager of Romania and Hristo Stoichkov as manager of Bulgaria and wisely decided that somebody of a similar passionate temperament was the man for the job. There should be high jinks and shenanigans aplenty at the Croatia v Serbia World Cup qualifier on March 22nd.
He was a natural midfielder until recently. Not sure where Austria have been playing him but hope he doesn’t play in the middle of the park against us.
[quote=“Sidney, post: 741995, member: 183”]mickee - look out for Neven Subotic - he’s Nemanja Vidic’s not quite as good former international team-mate.
I would have told you to also keep an eye out for Bayern Munich’s brilliant young Austrian left back David Alaba - bear in mind however that he doesn’t play for a top international team so you’re better off ignoring him.[/quote]
Subotic is decent but not in Hummels’ class
Ive read that Mijhalovic was involved with Arkan (zeliko ravnatovic) who was a notorious war lord during the civil war in Bosnia
Im sure Zvomiar Boban will be in attendance as well especially as the game will be played in the maksimir stadium where he launched that fantastic karate kick at the yugoslav/serb police during the riot that broke out at the Dinamo zagreb / red star game in 1990.
i dont want to hijack Rocko’s bundesliga thread so i will be setting up a seperate thread for this game
it would be fanatastic if Bilic was still in charge for croatia now, all hell would break loose
looks like i was right again
http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/sport/football/sinisa-mihajlovic-a-history-of-violence.18786287?_=0ba4924a3a10de69787bbb7834cf7eb2f0657e87
Sinisa would have no time for the bickering of Patrice Evra and Anton Ferdinand anyway
ill get a proper thread going for this closer to the game
id nearly try and go to this game if i can convince herself a midweek break in the Balkans is ok
You cant fly direct Tel aviv - zagreb but for obvious reasons there are many tel aviv belgrade flights due to the good relations between both governments
kicking fellas out of the national team for failing to sing the anthem is an honourble gesture IMO
this is a brilliant article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2007/may/31/onsecondthoughtssinisamiha
Given that Red Star recently became the first Serbian side to win the double in successive seasons you might have thought that their coach, Bosko Djurovski, would be safe. But no. The indications from Belgrade are that he will be replaced this summer - quite possibly by former Red Star hero Sinisa Mihajlovic. Mihajlovic has been serving as an assistant to Roberto Mancini at Internazionale, but his appointment would still represent a considerable risk. It is not just that he has no managerial experience, it is that he is, well, Sinisa Mihajlovic.
Roy Keane has shown at Sunderland that tempestuousness as a player is no hindrance to being a good manager, but at least Keane’s destructiveness tended to be directed at the opposition. They shared an unfortunate predilection for pursuing individual vendettas, but a display like Mihajlovic’s for Yugoslavia against Slovenia in Euro 2000 would have been anathema to Keane. So petulant was Mihajlovic that when he was eventually sent off after an hour, it improved his side so much that they came from 3-0 down to draw 3-3. It is hard to see how Mihajlovic could ever accuse a player of not giving his all without laying himself open to accusations of hypocrisy.
Nonetheless, he has a certain charisma, a sinister charm that in the right circumstances could inspire a team. I find him, I confess, a fascinating character, which is not to say I wish to defend him. It is true that a racist with a gorgeous left foot is still a racist, but to look no further than his deplorable abuse of Patrick Vieira in that Champions League game in 2000 seems a crazily reductive way of treating a turbulent genius. And as a player he was a genius, as his Serie A record 27 goals from free-kicks attests.
I don’t dispute that he fully deserved his punishment in the Vieira case - in fact, I think a two-game ban was lenient - but if Uefa really is committed to stamping out racism rather than following public opinion like a lap-dog, why was Mihajlovic’s claim that he was responding to being insulted as a “gypsy” never followed up? In fact, come to that, how, after Anderlecht’s Nenad Jestrovic had been sent off for racially abusing Momo Sissoko last season, was a leading British journalist able to say, without irony, “Oh, he’s a Serb, they’re all racist”? Not that that mitigates Mihajlovic’s offence; it just indicates that racism is a rather more complex issue than it is sometimes presented.
In the Vieira incident, he seems to have been lashing out at a perceived slight: as he saw it, when his honour was besmirched, he had to redeem it. That was also the case when he spat in Adrian Mutu’s ear while playing for Lazio against Chelsea in a Champions League game in 2003. “I want to make clear that I reacted in that way, because I was provoked in a dishonourable way - as I was with Vieira,” he said. “That, for better or for worse, is the way I am.”
His temper has always been prone to let him down. “As a kid I got into a lot of fights,” he said. “I got beaten up and I beat people up. I fought with older children. I didn’t get frightened. I remember there was a teacher who lived on our street who didn’t want me in her class because she thought I would cause trouble. However, I was always an excellent student, one of the best. Later, that teacher told me she regretted not having me in her class because I was a very different person in school to how I was on the street.”
Yet as that instinctive recourse to his childhood suggests, for all the snarls, there is a curious vulnerability about Mihajlovic. He admits to dreams in which he is attacked by snakes, and his memory of Red Star’s 1991 European Cup quarter-final against Dinamo Dresden is of feeling the concrete of the tunnel shaking with the noise of the crowd as he leant against it to stretch before kick-off, and wishing he were back home in Novi Sad.
It is impossible to consider Mihajlovic and not think of his background, son of a Croatian mother and a Serbian father, born in Vukovar, a town on the Danube in the far east of Croatia near the Serbian border. Mihajlovic remembers it as a peaceful place with a population of 50,000 - some Croatian, some Serb, many, like him, of mixed ethnicity. He was brought up in Borovo Selo, a village on the outskirts of the town, an area rural enough that when he made the short move to Novi Sad he became known as ‘Tractorman’. It was in Borovo Selo that there was the first use of ordnance in the war, as three Ambrust missiles were fired by Croat extremists in April 1991 - between the two legs of Red Star’s European Cup semi-final victory over Bayern Munich.
As a child, Mihajlovic would annoy the neighbours by practising his free-kicks until late into the night, thumping his ball against the metal yard gates. “I soon realised,” he said, “that the ball didn’t want me to dribble it. So I just kicked it.” By the time he was in his early teens his shot was powerful enough that his father had to replace the gate every few weeks. “I always wanted to be a footballer,” he went on. “In Borovo there was a local newspaper that gave information about the factory and other things that were happening in the village. Once they did a survey and asked pupils at the school what they wanted to do when they grew up. I was only seven or eight, but even then I wrote ‘professional footballer’.”
Not that it was all about football. “I remember my friend Zlatko had a birthday party, and I went behind the curtain in the living room with a girl called Ancica. We looked through the window and then we kissed. It was my first kiss, but I wasn’t uninformed. I had watched movies to see how it was done. I was afraid I might get it wrong, but everything happened spontaneously.”
Mihajlovic clearly has fond memories of growing up in Vukovar, but by autumn 1991 it was under siege from the Serb-dominated Yugoslav National Army (JNA). For weeks thousands were reduced to living in cellars without water or electricity, and snipers picked off civilians as they tried to flee. On November 19 the city, reduced to rubble, finally fell, and, despite the international community’s efforts to organise an evacuation, several hundred Croats were massacred.
Four years later, as the war came to an end, the Croats returned. To what extent revenge was taken against the Serbs who remained is unclear, but what is certainly true is that the Vukovar Serbs, mindful - and constantly reminded by propaganda from Belgrade - of the atrocities committed against Serbs by the pro-Nazi Ustase Croat government in 1941, were terrified. Given their son’s status as a hero of the local Serb community, Mihajlovic’s parents had more to fear than most.
A few hours before the Croatian army arrived in Borovo Selo, Mihajlovic’s parents were smuggled away. It is not known by whom, but the strong suspicion in Serbia is that it was by Arkan and his paramilitaries, the Tigers, who were certainly active in the region at the time. Mihajlovic returned to Borovo Selo six years ago. “It was wiped out - something like Hiroshima,” he said.
“Our house was reduced to rubble. I stopped the car near my old school because I wanted to walk along the path I used to take every day. But the school wasn’t there any more. When I went though the ruins of our house, I found an old poster of the Yugoslavia national team. There was a bullet hole where my heart should have been.” When German television showed footage of the house shortly after the region was handed back to Croatia, several photos of Mihajlovic could be seen amid the stones. In each of them, the eyes had been cut out, a clear reference to Ante Pavelic, the Ustase leader who demanded a bowl of eyes be brought to him every morning so he could be sure the massacres of Serbs were progressing at a suitable pace.
A fortnight after Arkan’s assassination in January 2000, for a Serie A game against Bari, Lazio fans decorated the Stadio Olimpico with banners dedicated to his memory. That may be coincidence - Arkan’s right-wing militarism, after all, is just the sort of thing to appeal to Lazio’s Ultras - but it seems likely it was Mihajlovic’s tribute to the man who saved his parents.
Given all that, the knee-jerk dismissal of Mihajlovic as a loathsome Serb nationalist seems grotesquely simplistic. None of that makes him a nice man, but he probably does deserve a more sympathetic hearing than he often gets. Whether he will be a good manager or not, though, is another question entirely.
Jonathan Wilson is Guardian Unlimited’s east European football correspondent and football correspondent of the Financial Times. His first book, [U]Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football[/U], was published in 2006.
[quote=“mickee321, post: 742007, member: 367”]Ive read that Mijhalovic was involved with Arkan (zeliko ravnatovic) who was a notorious war lord during the civil war in Bosnia
Im sure Zvomiar Boban will be in attendance as well especially as the game will be played in the maksimir stadium where he launched that fantastic karate kick at the yugoslav/serb police during the riot that broke out at the Dinamo zagreb / red star game in 1990.
i dont want to hijack Rocko’s bundesliga thread so i will be setting up a seperate thread for this game
it would be fanatastic if Bilic was still in charge for croatia now, all hell would break loose[/quote]
so you are basically a football hooligan then?..only going to the match in the hope of a tear up…sorry as well as an utter dickhead…
:rolleyes:
stupid post from scumpot, not really worthy of a response , this is the man who beats his “partner” around the bedroom and has to force himself on her as he documented here previously by himself.
Why would i be going to get involved in trouble?, its a retarded point, even if i wanted to id get killed, id be going as i have an interest in the game in that location, have lived there before, played amateur ball there before , have studied the situation over there, have serb friends and in general i spend a bit of my spare time going to games in SE europe and the middle east when work and the wife allows i have no financal worries so you know).
I think this is a very signifigant game, the athmosphere will be toxic and instead of sitting at home trying to get a stream on the internet id much rather be there.
i presume you will come back with another jaded response, and thats fair enough, i wouldnt expect much else
stupid post from scumpot, not really worthy of a response , this is the man who beats his “partner” around the bedroom and has to force himself on her as he documented here previously by himself.
Why would i be going to get involved in trouble?, its a retarded point, even if i wanted to id get killed, id be going as i have an interest in the game in that location, have lived there before, played amateur ball there before , have studied the situation over there, have serb friends and in general i spend a bit of my spare time going to games in SE europe and the middle east when work and the wife allows i have no financal worries so you know).
I think this is a very signifigant game, the athmosphere will be toxic and instead of sitting at home trying to get a stream on the internet id much rather be there.
i presume you will come back with another jaded response, and thats fair enough, i wouldnt expect much else[/quote]
but a paragraph later, we have one…you’re a fookin twat…
Stunning strike from Robben gives Munich a well deserved lead
Of course I’d singled out Robben and his return to form in my post above so that’s a real boost to my credibility. He was widely panned for his displays in big games against Dortmund last year so he’s another who had a point to prove.