Lads will be ashamed of their posts here yet
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That’s racist, you can’t post that.
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FOOTBALL | MATTHEW SYED
november 13 2019, 12:01am, the times
Saint Pep Guardiola’s unholy behaviour must be called to account
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No manager in this or any other era has been the beneficiary of such sustained hagiography as Pep Guardiola. His tactics have been fawned over by pundits, his expansive football the subject of literary essays, not to mention poetry.
He has been positioned as the personification of a new kind of management, perhaps even a new kind of leadership. Enlightened, morally pure, focused not just on the competitive tussles of football but also upon its aesthetic possibilities.
Guardiola made his feelings clear to Oliver after City were defeated by Liverpool on SundayJAVIER GARCIA/BPI/REX
Watching Saint Pep’s response to a crushing defeat by a rampant Liverpool on Sunday, I couldn’t help feeling that he has got rather carried away with the hype. It was almost as though he found it an affront to his divinity that an upstart German was prepared to expose his inadequate defence, and as for the officials, how dare they take decisions that went against his side.
He railed at the men in black, scowled at the sky, and rushed over to Michael Oliver at the end of the match to offer a sarcastic aside. When questioned about this, he seemed almost affronted that anybody would question his virtue. “It was not sarcastic,” he ludicrously claimed.
This is not unfamiliar territory for Guardiola, although we rarely hear about it. We all noted numerous spats (typically when his team lost) at Barcelona, a pattern that has continued in English football, not least when he confronted Paul Cook, the Wigan Athletic manager, during an FA Cup match in February 2018, the two men almost coming to blows in the tunnel at half-time. At Bayern Munich there were other unsavoury episodes, including when he said to a journalist: “Look at me when I am talking to you!”
I can’t help thinking that he is so rarely called out for this behaviour because so many have bought into the messianic image. When at a press conference last season, Rob Harris, of the Associated Press, asked whether he had received extracurricular payments from Sheikh Mansour — a valid question given the precedents relating to Roberto Mancini — it was though someone had farted in church. “Do you know the question you’re asking me, if I ever received money for another situation, right now, today?” Guardiola said, looking as though he may implode.
You would have thought that Guardiola might be a little more grateful for the good fortune he has enjoyed as a manager. He has had more than £1.2 billion to spend on players during his career. He has allegedly had a club transgressing financial fair play rules to pour even more money into wages and transfers. He has certainly had the benefit of facilities at the Etihad Campus that other coaches can only dream of. And even when he has misfortune, such as losing Ederson and Aymeric Laporte to injury, he can turn to talent worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
This column may come across as overly critical, perhaps even cynical. If so, let me reiterate that I much admire Guardiola, not least because of the crusading football that has been his hallmark since his earliest days as a manager. He is an innovator in the truest sense. Yet, I can’t help feeling that canonising anyone — football manager or otherwise — comes with risks. John the Baptist himself would have struggled to live up to the image that has been cultivated on Guardiola’s behalf.
And then there is the political hypocrisy that is so often skirted around. He wore yellow ribbons in support of jailed Catalan leaders last season, talking about human rights abuses, but has been less forthcoming when questioned about alleged violations in Abu Dhabi. Sheikh Mansour, a prominent member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, owns Manchester City. “Every country decides the way they want to live for themselves,” he said, bizarrely. He has also been muted about his (lucrative) ambassadorial position for Qatar’s pitch for the 2022 World Cup, a role that many argue served to sanitise the most notorious of bids.
What concerns me most are the double standards. A couple of years ago José Mourinho was sent to the stands when his foot overstepped the touchline, and and was banned for a match when he kicked a water bottle down the touchline. I find it difficult to believe Guardiola would have faced the same sanctions. He wasn’t even individually charged for his touchline spat with Cook, for example.
The halo may be slipping a little, but it still seems to offer a curious form of immunity. Visionary football manager or otherwise, Guardiola should be held to the same standards as everyone else.
Take nuanced view to Sterling
I suspect that Gareth Southgate made the right judgment call to drop Raheem Sterling for tomorrow’s match against Montenegro. The England manager recognises that he cannot afford any return to the cliques that characterised the team before his tenure.
As for Sterling, I hope it will lead us to see him in a more nuanced light. Like many, I was troubled by the negativity that seemed to stalk him earlier in his career, but have also been rather discombobulated by the sustained fawning of more recent times. On occasion, I have wondered if I was reading about a footballer or the second coming of the messiah.
What seems clear is that Sterling will learn from this rebuke from his manager. He certainly showed the maturity to apologise. “We are in a sport where emotions run high and I am man enough to admit when emotions got the better of me,” he said. Let us hope this represents the end of the matter
Gomez was in the canteen shaking everyone’s hand and then reached Sterling, who was sitting down. Sterling snapped and responded, “So you think you’re the big man?”, stood up and tried to get Gomez in a headlock, knocking food over from the table. “It was a pretty full-on thing and food went everywhere,” said one source. “Sterling behaved like a bit of a child.”
That’s a very long winded way of supporting racism
Big Joe has come out of this whole thing so well
He wasn’t goaded and there was a big element of humour to the way he reacted on the pitch
And neither was he goaded when Sterling went nuts in the canteen
A reaction like that comes from immense inner peace and strength
He is a mentality giant
The way he dealt with Sterling reminds me of how Safiyah Khan famously stared down the EDL
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There’s a serious rat in Southgates camp.
Less of that dehumanising language please
Uncle Tom Gomez playing to the gallery to demonise a player who was receiving terrible racist abuse.
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Why would anyone think Pep should be above a bit of bitching and moaning? The man is a known drug cheat FFS why should people expect him to be a paragon of virtue
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Pep is unhappy now that he has a bit of competition. Rumours that he is going back to Munich.
He’s out of there in the summer anyway and Manchester City will be fooked without him
Players cannot deal with other coaches when he goes because they are so institutionalised into his system
He pushes them to their absolute limit and that is unsustainable over a longer term period
But conversely, when the next coach comes in, he is inevitably a downgrade on Guardiola and the players drop off in intensity and performance, and dissatisfaction sets in
Guardiola is Manchester City’s only USP at the moment, and when he goes they will drop back considerably because they aren’t a genuinely big club and have sod all else to recommend them besides Guardiola
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If man city pay the necessary moola players will come .
Could Manchester City follow Tottenham Hotspur through the relegation trapdoor next season when Pep is gone?
History of domestic dominance? Check
Minimal pedigree in Europe? Check
History of financial doping/cheating program? Check
History of a PED program? Check
Juve is the next stop for Pep.
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Money gets the big players. Always has, always will.
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It has to be worrying for Pep that a Liverpool team ravaged with illness comfortably beat them the other day.
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In the three seasons following Guardiola’s departure Barcelona won 2 La Ligas and a Champions league.
Bayern Munich won the Bundesliga 3 years in a row too, along with domestic cups.
In the year following Guardiola’s departure Barcelona won the league almost by default as Real Madrid were rubbish
They were destroyed by Bayern Munich in Europe, 7-0 on aggregate
The year after that, they failed to reach the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in seven years and did not win a notably lower standard La Liga
In neither of those two seasons did Barcelona come close to the ultra-potent style of the Guardiola years, in truth they never would again and relied heavily on the individual brilliance of Messi to knit everything together in 2015
After Guardiola left Bayern, the Bayern players never warmed to Ancelotti as they felt he was too easy going and wasn’t pushing them hard enough, this ended up in Ancelotti being sacked early into his second season
Bayern win the Bundesliga every year by default because they are so economically dominant over every other club - they won it last season despite being very poor by their modern standards
Bayern have declined considerably since Guardiola left