After having the sort of success that Pep had at Barca, I'd like to see him try his hand with a smaller club. One with limited resources, in dire need of an overhaul. A club that is floundering in relative obscurity, say two or three divisions down off the top flight. I'd like to see if he has the mettle to navigate promotion and relegation battles, and if he could turn a team of relative nobodies into one as revered as his beloved Catalans.
He's been at the apex of football. I think he should give it a go from a position where the status of the club he inherits is far more ambiguous than a club whose romance dates back to the Spanish Civil War. This isn't necessarily a dig at Barcelona, but it's more of an indictment of this perceived culture amongst football managers, that getting to the top and staying there is more rewarding than (re)building a club from the ground up, and turning them into an institution.
To me, the idea of a "moral crusader", which is an allusion I've seen made with regard to Pep in multiple places - would stay away from a Titan of European football. He would go to a club that he could make a definite, and potentially profound, impact at. There's no impact to be made at a club like Bayern, with all due respect to their history and tradition. They are fairly set in their ways. They have a system in place that has brought them success, in various forms, for the last 40 years. I'm not saying that Pep couldn't do amazing things at Bayern, but I can't see him being name-dropped in the same sentence as the likes of Beckenbauer and Muller.
I'd like to see him manage a club like Preston. They have the history. Or Huddersfield. Or hell, even Burney! Or, just because the romantic in me thinks it would be neat to see, Pro Vercelli. It's all just a pipe dream, though. I doubt that any manager of Pep's profile would want to take the risk of actually putting together a long-term project with a club that would love to have someone with that sort of ambition and vision take charge. I think, in that way, Pep could have cemented his legacy as a football manager. Much in the way that Shankly did at Liverpool, or Clough did at Derby/Forest.
The article was one about how Guardiola, after his year's sabbatical from football, had chosen to return managing in Germany. A place that many, including myself, had thought he wouldn't dare enter. A lot of people I knew had it figured that Pep would take over for Alex Ferguson, when the old war horse retired from Man United. I, personally, was disappointed. I had thought that this man, whom the media did a lot in portraying him as a moral crusader in football, and for football, was cast against type.
Apparently, there has been a bit of ballyhooing about how Bayern may need a shake up. Mostly because the reigning European champions got their business handed to them, in the form of a 5-0 aggregate slaughtering at the hands of Real Madrid. I'm not entirely sure what all of this petulance is all about. Or the escalation that seems to happen between club and manager. And because of the massiveness of that loss, it appears at least one or two people want Pep run out of Munich on a rail. But there is a flaw in this. Considering the aggregate scoreline, Guardiola knows that something different is approaching. A changing of the guard, as it were. And he knows this, because of his history with Real Madrid, as well as his boyhood club's history. There is a significance to the 5-0 scoreline in El Clasico.
I am still skeptical, that Guardiola is the right man for Bayern. I cannot see Bayern changing its system to fit Pep's vision. Especially when you consider that it was Bayern who overtook Ajax as reigning European champions in the 70s, and made Total Football look amateurish against Beckenbauer as sweeper and doom-bringer. Also, considering the draw of the European Cup that season, had Ajax managed to beat CSKA September Flag, I don't know that they would have beaten Bayern. And Bayern would have been their next opposition. But that is also indicative of the change in football philosophy. Rinus Michels' concept of possession-based Total Football was eventually overturned and put to sleep by Bayern's forceful counterattack. Which eventually led into England's dominance, using a similar formula to Bayern's.
Pep Guardiola is a student of that philosophy. Tiki-taka was born out of the lessons that Rinus Michels taught at Ajax. But that system was born by Jimmy Hogan, who influenced the style of play that would eventually help the Mighty Magyars make England show its ass in 1954. It was a system of pass and run, and possession, and space creation. Under Michels, it became Total Football, and gave players a license to play wherever necessary, to create space or close it down, as the play dictated. Johan Cruyff helped instill this philosophy at FC Barcelona, which was what Guardiola was taught during his years there as a player. Tiki-taka was the next evolution of Total Football. And Barcelona regularly made strong, capable clubs look like Academy sides. See: The utter dismantling of Man United in the 2009 and 2011 Champions League finals. This system, Tiki-taka, was adopted and adapted by the Spanish national squad to great effect. So much so that it has won them three major international honors.
While there has been an on-going revolution in football in Spain, Germany has been rebuilding. Rebranding its footballing identity. Through managers like van Gaal, there has been a gradual shift away from the tried and true Beckenbauer counterattack. The move has been more toward a slow adoption of a more possession-based attack. But it hasn't completely taken hold. And because of this, I think that Pep Guardiola is a bad fit at Bayern.
The conceptualisation that Pep has of football, molded by Cruyff, and Michels, and all of the Dutch-cum-Catalan proponents of Total Football; it contrasts starkly with the German vision of football. Almost to the point of friction, if you want to analyse it that extensively. And this is something that a lot of people tend to miss. Especially the media. They're so busy tabloiding every little breath and error that managers make, and escalating every club decision into a nuclear war; that they tend to miss out on the underlying reasons.
This goes on all the time in the media, in fact. They hack, they butcher, they mutilate stories. They sensationalise. They shit all over the truth. The best recent example of this is David Moyes and Manchester United. They spent so many hours of articles devoted to the doom and gloom at Man United. They had posts from former coaches, from the Ferguson era mind, who were critical of Moyes, but it only comes off as sour grapes. They spent so much time just banally droning on about how Moyes was at fault. But the media never truly took time to investigate what was going on. They just wanted to sell papers, or get website hits. Because that's all their bottom-line is. What will attract the most readership. And the readers want to be able to go onto their site, and on their blog, and to get into pissing matches with supporters of opposition clubs, or the same club; over their differing views of the current events. The bigger picture doesn't matter. Making money does. But that's business for you.
In the same vain, that's a lot of what is going on with the clubs nowadays. Especially the megalith club hegemony at the summit of European football. They're so damned afraid of losing their spot, of losing that precious television pay out, that they willingly sell their souls to the megacorporations, or the oil barons, or the carpetbaggers and snake-oil salesmen; all promising to bring, or maintain, the level of prosperity the club and its supporters have become accustomed to. And in this process, any charlatan can waltz into a club office with his CV and potentially end up making a big payday when he can't maintain the club's status. In the end, the clubs blame the manager. The players blame the manager. The supporters blame the manager. And the media has to jump in and hammer this point home, to the point of it becoming a deafening din. Especially in how the media stokes the fires. The media propagate the notion that these clubs aren't profligate over these care-taking scapegoats.
Unfortunately, I think that's what is happening to Pep Guardiola. His stature as this philosophical giant in football has seemingly set him apart as a target when it comes to the conflict in his footballing philosophy with Bayern's. Sure, Bayern went out and absolutely destroyed all the competition in the Bundesliga. But they weren't able to overtake the mighty Galacticos from Madrid, and retain their European crown. However, as has been pointed out here, I believe, there hasn't been a repeat winner of a European competition since Madrid won the UEFA Cup in the mid-80s (Editor's Note: According to a previous post on this here blog, AC Milan in '89-90 in the European Cup, and Sevilla in '06-07 defended the UEFA Cup). So, unfortunately, Pep gets caught up in the zeitgeist that is the Real Madrid Rolling Cavalcade of Managers Who Underachieve When They Don't Win Every Trophy in Sight and Traveling Salvation Show. Also unfortunately, a lot of that mentality has been proliferated in the media, since football was invented, way back in 1992. The Sky Sports mentality of oversaturation of football. The invasive nature of the media juggernaut and its desire to have more more more. Odds are that the mountain that has been made out of this proverbial mole-hill, is just a media invention. Player unrest was jumped on and amplified.
If Pep leaves Bayern, who knows where he will go. I stand by the belief about his being a moral crusader of football, however much of a media invention it may be. I think he will find the most success where he can actually implement and evolve his vision. At a club where he is free to build and design to his wildest dreams. And one where he will be supported, no matter what, because the club, the players, and the supporters all understand his long-term vision. In a lot of ways, it's reminds me of Brian Clough at Derby or Forest. Well, only without the ego and Peter Taylor. Time will only tell where this fracas will go, or when it will ensue. But I'm sure as resolute as Pep is about his philosophies on football, so too will Bayern remain stubborn in its face. And we will see a return to form, once Pep has moved on.
