Nobody could ever say Guardiola lacks guts - and, again, there is clear evidence that it has rubbed off on the two managers who are now trying to deprive him of the Premier League and FA Cup.Īrteta made it very clear he was the boss, and that his word was final, when he decided Arsenal ought to sever ties with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. It’s time for a restart.” Eto’o did help Guardiola win the Champions League that season, but left the following summer.įrom left: Samuel Eto’o, Ronaldinho and Deco all failed to make it into Pep Guardiola’s long-term plans at Barcelona (Photo: Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images) “In fact, we will be going onwards without them. “These three are not in my mind for the future,” Guardiola said. He also marginalised Yaya Toure and publicly criticised Sergio Aguero for not playing the way he wanted.Īt Barcelona, he went even further, announcing his exit plan for Ronaldinho, Deco and Samuel Eto’o on his first day in the job.
One of Guardiola’s first acts at City was to move out Joe Hart, an England international. The lesson of history shows that is true in many ways. Sometimes that leads to clashes with players, but Guardiola has only grown in authority over the years.” “He is uncompromising in that,” Ten Hag says in a chapter named ‘In Germany with Pep’. If the ball was lost, it had to be recaptured within seconds. But Guardiola, he noted, had a follow-up rule. Ten Hag had been brought up on the Dutch philosophy that possession is sacred. Yet Ten Hag adopted the “ half-spaces” idea and noted at Euro 2020 that Germany, under Joachim Low, seemed to have done the same. In reality, the first and second teams at Bayern are largely separate worlds. The nickname did not last beyond Germany and it would be stretching the truth to think the two men had spent their days brainstorming. Ten Hag, in his Bayern years, was so meticulous in his work that people started calling him “Mini Pep”. It’s part of permanent memory, the hard drive.” Everything that once was learned is now instinct. The car becomes an extension of the driver. “You don’t think about the traffic rules, shifting the gears or pressing the brake on time it happens automatically. “It’s like being behind the wheel,” writes Meijer. It was to help the players understand their positions and, Pep being Pep, it was about repeating, repeating and repeating his training drills until it became second nature. One passage details how Guardiola had marked Bayern’s training pitches with extra lines to create “half-spaces”, vertical strips between the centre of the pitch and the wings. Maarten Meijer, the Dutch writer, spoke to Ten Hag about it in further detail for his 2022 biography about the man who won three Eredivisie championships with Ajax. Then, gradually, the ideas and tactics would form. Guardiola would sit in his office, playing the game in his head, and everyone knew not to disturb him. He saw how the manager would completely shut himself off from the outside world when he had a big game coming up. I learned a lot from his methods, how he transferred his philosophy to the pitch.”Įrik ten Hag learned a lot from Pep Guardiola during their time at Bayern Munich (Photo: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images) I watched almost every training (session). The whole league changed because of his way of football. “Football in Germany has been different since Pep. “I was able to experience his approach up close, and I learned a lot from that,” says Ten Hag, manager of Bayern’s reserve team from 2013 to 2015. They had three years together at City before Arteta’s switch to Arsenal and, on the other side of Manchester, there is one man in particular who can testify how valuable it is to have that time, close-up, with Guardiola.Įrik ten Hag, the manager of Manchester United, collaborated with him for two years at Bayern Munich. “The ball is not a bomb - it’s a treasure,” is one line, and you can imagine Guardiola nodding with approval.Īrteta is different, in one sense, because he worked alongside Guardiola as a coach rather than a player. This is the message Xavi has preached to the players at Camp Nou since he replaced Ronald Koeman in November 2021. Xavi (right) impressed Santi Cazorla during their time together at Al Sadd in Qatar (Photo: Karim Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images)
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