Pep Guardiola Needs to Beat Barcelona to Confirm the Dominance of His Methods

Some interesting things happened the last time Pep Guardiola managed a visiting team at the Camp Nou.

Barcelona had less of the ball than the opposition—then just the second time in 442 games that that had happened—while Bayern Munich, Guardiola’s team, failed to register a shot on target. And the Catalans' decisive goal in the 77th minute, the first in a 3-0 win, came after his goalkeeper had tried to play out from the back and given the ball away.

It was as if everything he thought he had known during his spell as Barcelona’s most successful coach had first turned cold on him and then turned his own fortunes to ashes.

Possession football had failed in the face of Barca’s quick turnovers, and the proficiency at the back that was—and still is—at the beating heart of his mantra had been exposed for the risky, delicate business it can be. It was as though everything had changed, but Guardiola had just changed the same.

Manu Fernandez/Associated Press/Associated Press

This is not a tactical appraisal of how his Bayern approached the 2015 Champions League semi-final at the Camp Nou, though.

He was criticised at the time for playing only three defenders against what was then the strongest front three in world football, but in truth, going man-to-man in this way wasn’t what did it for Bayern that night.

The intense, high pressing of Barca’s full-backs—Dani Alves on the right and Jordi Alba on the left—shut down the flanks that had become the linchpin of Bayern’s fluency in attack over the course of Guardiola’s second season in charge; in failing to find the necessary space, his team eventually ran out of steam. It was a tactical defeat, but no one could have accused him of having stood still tactically.

Barcelona and Guardiola had each changed since parting company in 2012. Both had become more direct in their approach, adapting to alterations in personnel. Both were now happy to let the ball work harder. Three years of evolution and change later, Barca came out on top, and the score would suggest by some distance.

The truth is that Bayern were played off the park that night, despite the possession stats leaning slightly in their favour. Guardiola’s recalibrated approach had been unmeshed by a team that played to its strengths every bit as much as the Barcelona side that had won him three La Liga titles and two Champions Leagues, albeit those strengths were different now. He had walked face first into a hurricane and been blown off his feet.

Despite winning three titles in three years in Germany, the collective weight of three Champions League semi-final failures with Bayern—collapses even, by a 12-5 aggregate scoreline that sits grotesquely out of place within the context of Guardiola’s record—is what lingers most conspicuously at the forefront of his record since leaving Barca.

However, the failure to leave an impression at the Camp Nou cannot have sat easily with Manchester City’s manager. Wednesday night, then, offers a sumptuous possibility for the Catalan.

Don’t discount the weight of pride in his reckoning. Guardiola’s departure from Barcelona wasn’t a happy one. Neither was his relationship with former Barca president Sandro Rosell, whom he found to be cold and bureaucratic. Before Rosell had been Joan Laporta, and his volcanic, undermining temperament.

As the manager tired of his work, he also became drained by the frictions drummed up between him and his two presidents.

That is not to say there was no common ground to work on, though. When it came to football, there was plenty.

Laporta in particular had gunned hard for Guardiola’s appointment as first-team coach in 2008, on the premise that the two shared a common understanding of how football at Barcelona was supposed to be played. But there was more to it.

In his account of Guardiola’s first steps after Barca, Pep Confidential: The Inside Story of Pep Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich, Marti Perarnau wrote (h/t Goal):

"

No decision was straightforward, whether it involved transferring training sessions to the new training ground, making sure his technical staff had the same sponsored cars as the squad, organising publicity shots or agreeing the club’s official position on any issue. FC Barcelona was a vast machine that moved to a rhythm and leadership style that had little to do with the way Guardiola managed his team.

"

Rui Vieira/Associated Press/Associated Press

The exhaustion that led to his exit was as much to do with the running of the club as it had been the toll taken by football matters.

Fittingly, Guardiola didn’t return to the Camp Nou until March 2015 when Manchester City visited, almost three years after his departure as coach. There was no place in the directors’ box that night; instead, he sat in the stands, his face largely covered by a scarf.

A win over Barca with City would be everything for Guardiola. Not just for what it would mean for him as a tactician, but for what it would do for those lingering mental aches and pains that have hung around like a bad cold since he departed the Camp Nou amid a grubby falling-out between the two men who had served as his president.

After winning the club's 2010 presidential election, Rosell had persuaded the Barca board to pursue legal action over Laporta, to whom Guardiola continued to feel a debt of loyalty. If he became not exactly a pawn in the process, then the manager’s position of ultimate authority at the club was certainly undermined.

“At times Pep felt like the captain of a ponderous ocean liner as he fought to steer the team in one direction while the club pulled in the other,” Perarnau reflected.

At City, there is nothing to divert from Guardiola’s position as all-powerful. To claim victory from here would be the ultimate expression of his unconditional control over his circumstances, which was always lacking at chaotic Barca.

City have made no secret of their use of Barcelona as a blueprint for their own development. There is an inner stability to their ways and means that Barca, via their unique history of virtues and vices, seem to lack.

JON SUPER/Associated Press/Associated Press

The recent financial histories of the two clubs are an indicator of the differences. When Laporta assumed control at Barca in 2003, the club’s accounts were riddled with €186 million debt, a situation that remains dire in 2016. Player salaries, meanwhile, accounted for 88 per cent of the money coming in, according to former Barcelona vice president Ferran Soriano.

On the other hand, City’s latest accounts report zero debt and a healthy cash reserve. The wage bill is 50 per cent of total income, considered by chief executive and former Barcelona vice-president Ferran Soriano to be around the optimum figure for a successful club. These figures have bred a healthy calm around the Etihad Stadium, one in which Guardiola operates without obstacle.

Victory against Barca would be a victory for this serene, thoughtful approach to club management, the one promoted by Soriano in the boardroom and by Guardiola in the dugout.

All that’s left to accomplish is the small matter of getting it right on the pitch.