Pep Guardiola changed the face of English football. The legacy he leaves is enormous

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As much to his own surprise as anyone else’s, Guardiola has stayed for almost a decade. He has led Manchester City to six Premier League titles, winning the FA Cup three times and the League Cup five times, as well as adding the Champions League, Super Cup and Club World Cup in that annus mirabilis of 2023. Now, finally, he is ready to say goodbye, his only regret being that Arsenal have denied him a seventh Premier League title as a parting gift. The legacy he leaves goes much further than the trophies he has won. It is also his influence as the leading proponent of a possession-based playing style that many felt incompatible with English football values when he arrived in 2016. It is now so deeply ingrained in modern coaching circles that it can be traced all the way from the Premier League to the National League to the sodden pitches of Sunday league. Or at least it could until recently. Over the past year or two there has been something of a retreat from “Pep-ball”: the increased weaponisation of set pieces at the expense of build-up play; a slight but undeniable downturn in pass completion rates — in the Championship and League Two as well as the Premier League — after a steady increase over the previous years. Even Guardiola has compromised on his principles by signing a centre-forward (Erling Haaland) and goalkeeper (Gianluigi Donnarumma) who excel at the basics of the job (putting the ball in the net, keeping the ball out of the net) but contribute relatively little to build-up play In some ways, this season’s Premier League has been more reminiscent of the one Guardiola described, aghast, shortly after his arrival in 2016: “Nine goals, eight from set pieces — corners, free kicks, throw-ins,” he told reporters, referencing a game he had watched between Swansea City and Crystal Palace. “That is English football and I have to adapt because never before have I lived that.” His first season at Manchester City included several chastening moments, most notably a couple of heavy defeats, at Leicester City (4-2) and Everton (4-0), as his team ended up third in the Premier League, 15 points behind Chelsea and eight points behind Tottenham Hotspur. There was much talk about how, unlike Antonio Conte at Chelsea and Jose Mourinho at Manchester United, he had been guilty of naivety, imagining that the rules of engagement in the Premier League were no different to those in La Liga and the Bundesliga. There was a fascinating episode of Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football towards the end of Guardiola’s first season, in which Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher raised their concerns about the direction he had taken. Carragher felt a central midfield trio of Fernandinho, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva might be too lightweight for the Premier League. Neville reeled off a list of previous champions — Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Arsenal, Chelsea, Leicester the previous season — and pointed out that “every single team that has won the league, barring none, has had power and strength at the heart of them, that spine”. Trying to do it without that physicality and resilience at the heart of the team, Neville said, “would defy Premier League logic (…), having to wade through those winter months and playing those horrible games that we know exist. Can you win a league playing that way?” These were all reasonable questions. But it turned out you could. Guardiola and Manchester City won it over the next two seasons with totals of 100 points and 98 points. Over those two campaigns, they won 64 Premier League games out of 76, taking 198 points from a possible 228. To put that in context, the best record in back-to-back seasons in English football history prior to that was Mourinho’s Chelsea team, who recorded 58 wins and 186 points across the 2004-05 and 2005-06 campaigns. Chelsea scored 144 goals in the process. Manchester City scored 201. What’s more, they did all of that without the slightest regard for the Premier League’s title-winning playbook. To a team that was felt to have a soft centre, Guardiola added a ball-playing goalkeeper (Ederson), three full-backs (Kyle Walker, Danilo, Benjamin Mendy) and another small playmaker (Bernardo Silva). That added up to a £240million ($322m) outlay in the summer of 2017 — so plenty of ammunition there for those who would dismiss him as a “chequebook manager” — but he did so in continued defiance of that “Premier League logic”, while Mourinho was investing heavily in height, muscle and aggression for the spine of the team (Victor Lindelof, Nemanja Matic, Romelu Lukaku) at Manchester United. There was no compromise. Manchester City played an even lower proportion of long passes (six per cent) in Guardiola’s second season than in his first (eight per cent). From an average of 60.9 per cent possession per game in 2016-17, which was already by far the highest in the league, they recorded an average of 66.4 per cent in 2017-18. To put those figures in context, the average possession figures for the previous eight title-winning teams had ranged from a high of 56.9 per cent (Chelsea in 2009-10) to a low of 44.7 per cent (Leicester in 2015-16). This was the type of change that Xavi Hernandez, one of the artists at the heart of Guardiola’s midfield at Barcelona, had suggested English football needed. “I think he will change the face of English football,” Xavi said at a conference in Saudi Arabia in 2016. “If there is anyone capable of changing that mentality, it is Guardiola.” English football was at a fairly low ebb when Guardiola arrived a decade ago. Leicester’s Premier League title triumph in 2016 was a wonderful moment for the Premier League, but it also reflected a rare season when all the leading clubs were in varying states of upheaval. There had been several years of underperformance in European club competition. The national team had been knocked out of Euro 2016, having been eliminated from the previous World Cup at the first hurdle. Changes were already afoot — more investment in academy facilities, coach education, an increased focus on skill-based coaching at youth level — but the likes of Mauricio Pochettino at Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur, Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool and Guardiola at Manchester City brought a much greater, modernised focus on playing with speed and intensity both with and without the ball. In an interview with The Athletic last week, City captain Bernardo, who is also leaving at the end of the season, suggested that “in terms of offensive concepts, I would say he (Guardiola) is by far the best manager I’ve seen. I don’t think there is anyone better”. It makes it all the more curious that, among some football fans, Guardiola is cast as a figure who has stifled creativity rather than encouraged it. Where his admirers see free-flowing, free-scoring football, in which creative players such as Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi (at Barcelona), Thiago Alcantara, Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben (at Bayern Munich) and Silva, De Bruyne, Bernardo, Riyad Mahrez, Phil Foden and Ryan Cherki (at Manchester City) have excelled, his detractors see possession retained “for the sake of it”, “too many sideways passes”. In particular they cite the struggles of the much-loved Jack Grealish, whose free-spirited personality and playing style never — or very rarely — looked likely to thrive at Manchester City under a coach who makes as many complex demands, both in and out of possession, as Guardiola. “I think it’s the opposite,” Bernardo said when the “boring” characterisation of Guardiola’s football was put to him. “We always go at teams. We never choose to sit at the back. The boring games we have are because the opponents sit at the back. When they play 11 players behind the ball, then it becomes a game of patience. But if you look at the games where teams come at us and play man-to-man, the games are usually open and crazy.” At times, the “boring” tag seemed to attach itself to Guardiola’s Manchester City — and likewise his Barcelona and Bayern teams — because they seemed almost too precise, too perfect in their movements. Guardiola’s Manchester City won so many games so comfortably that, yes, a sense of jeopardy was often missing until the last couple of seasons. That is less a Guardiola than a competitive-balance issue. The past couple of decades have brought a series of changes — structural, financial and indeed those relating to the laws of the game — that have created a far greater imbalance between the elite teams and the rest. Guardiola, like his former Barcelona and Spain team-mate Luis Enrique, has maximised those advantages by focusing on an ultra-technical style designed to dominate matches and entire seasons to an unprecedented degree. So many of today’s leading coaches have been influenced by Guardiola. The man who has been identified as his successor (Enzo Maresca) previously worked alongside him at Manchester City, as did the coach who has just led Arsenal to their first Premier League title in 22 years (Mikel Arteta). The coach who has transformed Paris Saint-Germain into an elite team showcasing beautiful, dominant, expressive football (Luis Enrique) played and coached alongside Guardiola at Barcelona. Bayern Munich’s coach (Vincent Kompany) played under him at Manchester City, as did Chelsea’s new manager (Xabi Alonso) at Bayern. Cesc Fabregas, whose reputation is growing at Italian club Como, played under Guardiola at Barcelona. So did Barcelona assistant coach Alcantara. Arne Slot, who led Liverpool to the Premier League title last season, told Dutch magazine Voetbal International in 2023 that Guardiola’s approach “gives me the ultimate pleasure in football”. This degree of influence at the very highest level of the game is not normal. Coaches as successful as Carlo Ancelotti and Jose Mourinho inspire great respect and admiration among their peers, as did Sir Alex Ferguson and others in the past, but Guardiola’s influence — both direct and indirect — is unparalleled in the modern game. There is, of course, an enormous elephant in the room: this glorious Manchester City era has unfolded against a backdrop of serious allegations about the club’s financial conduct. A resolution to the Premier League’s investigation into at least 115 alleged breaches of final regulations is expected soon, but it is three years since Guardiola said he wanted a swift decision so that “if we have done something wrong, everybody will know it and, if we have — like we believe — (acted) in the right way, then the people will stop talking about it”. The club deny any wrongdoing, yet, depending on the outcome, their outstanding achievements over the past 15 seasons might come to be viewed very differently. But these questions have always been for City’s owners and executive team, not for Guardiola or for the many players who were drawn to the club in the years under investigation (2009 to 2018) or since. When Chelsea were recently fined £10.75m by the Premier League after declaring that the previous ownership regime made a series of secret payments to agents, the club’s success over that period (between 2011 and 2018) was immediately cast in a far less flattering light. Not many people, however, concluded that financial chicanery at executive level should be used as a stick with which to beat the players and coaches who had won trophies over the years in question. The strange thing about Guardiola’s legacy is that it has not been greatly enhanced in his final two years in Manchester. From winning six league titles over the previous seasons, they fell to a distant third place last year, 13 points adrift of champions Liverpool. A distant second place looked likely for much of this one; only for a few weeks in the spring, after an invigorating Carabao Cup final victory over Arsenal, did he and his team really give the impression they might be ready to deny Arteta’s side once more. Equally disappointing has been their drop in performance on the European front. It is less that they failed to add to the Champions League title they won in 2023 and more that, in the past two campaigns, they got no further than the round of 16, beaten at home and away on both occasions (aggregate deficit of 6-3 and 5-1) by one of the least convincing Real Madrid teams of modern times. There have been times over the past two seasons when Guardiola has begun to look weary, when the direction of this Manchester City team has become harder to identify. He has spoken about the challenge of adapting to a different type of Premier League, which he said had come to be characterised by the fast, transition-based approach of Bournemouth and Brighton & Hove Albion. In that context, it felt fitting that Guardiola’s team were overrun by Bournemouth for long periods on Tuesday night as his hopes of one last Premier League title were extinguished. But equally it has been possible to look at Manchester City over the past two seasons and feel that, even with a few outstanding technical players, they have become far less fluent and incisive in possession. Might Guardiola finally, in trying so hard to stay ahead of the curve, have compromised too much? In many ways, the Premier League he is leaving behind is more reminiscent of the one he arrived into a decade ago (“Nine goals, eight from set pieces — corners, free kicks, throw-ins”). It is a reminder of how, in top-class sport, tactical trends tend to be cyclical. The widespread imitation of “Pep-ball” was always going to provoke a counter-movement at some stage. But even if the Premier League has moved beyond “peak Guardiola”, his departure will leave a huge void at Manchester City — and potentially an opportunity for rival clubs, not just Arsenal, to exploit. Even Chelsea and Manchester United should feel that making a credible challenge for the Premier League title — which neither of them has done since they won it in 2017 and 2013 respectively — can become a credible objective in the post-Guardiola landscape. Does that appraisal underestimate Maresca? Perhaps. Taking over from Guardiola in 2026 might be less daunting than it would have been two or three years ago. A new vision, new ideas and new energy might — might — be what Manchester City need, in the same way Liverpool benefited last season from Klopp’s handover to Slot. But what sets apart the truly great coaches is the ability and the drive to go again and again — and to find the energy and inspiration to ensure their players do likewise. Just as Ferguson was underestimated as a tactician, so are Guardiola’s powers of man-management too easily glossed over. But the intensity with which he works — day after day, week after week, season after season — is obvious, as are the demands he puts on his players. Winning six league titles in seven seasons, when competing with teams of the quality of Klopp’s Liverpool and Arteta’s Arsenal, speaks volumes. That is the quality that Bernardo, even after citing his coach’s “genius”, singled out about Guardiola: “his hunger for more and more and more every time”. It is why, long after he first suggested he would leave Manchester City at the end of this season, there were some among the club’s hierarchy who hoped and believed he could be persuaded to stay. But no, this time Guardiola is ready to say goodbye. The legacy he leaves — for Manchester City, for the Premier League, for English football more widely — is enormous. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms