The bottles of water lined up on Pep Guardiola’s table were branded “City Football”. There were so many people wanting entry they were giving out wristbands, festival-style, and when he took his seat there was a moment when he turned to his left, looked out of the window at the village-sized training ground and blew out his cheeks in admiration. A lot of people do that when they are new to this part of Manchester. It just resonates more when it is a member of football royalty, previously of Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
These were the moments when we were reminded how far this rejuvenated old club has come under the ownership of the Abu Dhabi royal family. Alan Ball used to turn up to some press conferences clutching a glass of beer. Frank Clark found out on his first day at City there was not enough training kit for the players and Kevin Keegan’s introductory press conference took place in a bar at Maine Road where what was left of the carpet stuck to one’s shoes. Keegan, still raw from his experiences with England, had not received the memo that these events are supposed to be bright and convivial. “The vultures are here, then?” he had said before taking his seat.
Six full-time managers on Guardiola has joined a very different club. His wife, Cristina, was in the third row, surrounded by a clutch of family friends, and when Guardiola described himself as “always nervous … afraid of you all,” referring to his first audience with a group of unfamiliar journalists, we were reminded of the difference between himself and the man who had taken part in a similar event across the city a few days earlier.
José Mourinho had swept into Manchester United as if he already felt like a part of Old Trafford’s fittings – not, perhaps, the most bullish we have seen him but bullish all the same and delivering a classic piece of braggadocio in his explanation why he apparently had no reason to goad Guardiola, Arsène Wenger or anyone else. “I am the manager of Manchester United,” Mourinho said. “I am the manager of the biggest club in the UK, so I don’t have to look at the others so much.”
Guardiola, in comparison, was less demonstrative, measured in his statements and nonconfrontational in a way that seemed genuine. There was barely a trace of ego from the most coveted coach in the industry. There were no bold promises about what he could do or showy statements about what he had done in the past. In fact, the man credited with assembling the most beautifully efficient Barcelona side of all time was modest to the point it was tempting to interrupt and remind him of some of those previous glories.
He was lucky, he said more than once, presumably referring to the fact he had so many exquisitely talented players at Camp Nou, and he seemed awkward about the suggestion that he had been hired as some sort of football messiah. “To come to the country who created football and believe you have to change something would be a little bit presumptuous. I’m not good enough to change everything. No … [shaking head] to change the mentality of a club [that has been around] for 120 years would be presumptuous. I trust a lot in myself. I think I am able to do the job but I don’t come here to think I can change the mentality or the culture of England.”
Maybe not England but Guardiola has been appointed to change City and, if anything, that is the danger for the man, to quote Jorge Valdano, who believes in football where “greatness is possible – he never cheats, he is always brave, he takes away all the miseries of the game”.
City have spent so long trying to nail this man down that amazing success is expected, and soon. Guardiola has been an obsession for City, the man they expect will win them the Champions League, and that brings considerable pressure. “It is demanding in Barcelona like you cannot imagine,” Guardiola pointed out in return. “You cannot imagine. You cannot survive there if you don’t win. I survived four years because in the first year I won. If not, I would have been sacked.”
Equally he understood the point. “I need time. I know I don’t have time. It was the same at Barcelona, the same in Munich, so that is the expectation. People don’t expect to see in January and February how good we are. They expect it in the first friendly game against Bayern Munich [on 20 July]: ‘How good is Pep?’ It won’t be easy.”
He is, after all, new to England and it came across in the number of times he talked about having never played on Boxing Day or in “stadiums where it is freezing or windy”. City start the new season at home to Sunderland, followed a week later by a trip to Stoke, and it did sound slightly strange to hear Guardiola talk about preparing to meet “Big Sam” and expecting it to be more physical than the football he has encountered elsewhere.
“I don’t need two months to know here will be completely different. When I see a guy who played here, like Xabi Alonso, I always say: ‘Tell me about England, tell me about the Premier League.’ I never found one person who said: ‘Oh, it will be easy for you.’ They all said: ‘It’s tough, it’s tough.’ I don’t know why. That’s what I want to discover. The big clubs go wherever, they’re soft [in a game] and they are able to lose. I have to discover that for myself. I have to see that.”
He needs to pick it up quickly, too, because none of this is new to Mourinho, but it is also worth remembering Guardiola has been preparing himself for this move for several years. The reason why he moved to New York after leaving Barcelona was primarily because he “was so tired, my energy was spent, it was empty”. Yet there were ulterior motives. “I went there to improve my English,” he said. “If Bayern Munich had not come for me, maybe with the English teams, Manchester City, I would have come here then.”
Note the use of the word “teams” – in plural. Just about every major club in England has wanted him at one stage or another. Yet City always had a head-start once Abu Dhabi put in place the former Barcelona executives Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain to run the operation. “Txiki was so important in my life,” Guardiola said. “When I was absolutely nobody, when I was nothing, they trusted me to handle this amazing club, Barcelona, and amazing players. I said to him: ‘Once I go to England, if you are with one club, I will go to you.’”
He has kept his word, with such a long preamble he was even consulted about transfer business last summer when Manuel Pellegrini was manager. On that basis it should be no surprise that Guardiola sounds so supportive of Raheem Sterling; the Catalan was involved in the process that brought him to the club in the first place. Sterling has already had a call from his new manager and do not be surprised to see an upturn in his form next season. “The problem is recovering confidence when a player has no quality,” Guardiola said. “Then I cannot help him. But Sterling has quality. He just has to focus on his life, his profession and I’m pretty sure he will play good.”
Guardiola wanted “good body language on the pitch” and the attitude “I run for you, you run for me”. He wanted to “keep their confidence, every training session, every speech, every time we speak, whether we’re taking a beer together or whatever”.
As for Mourinho, could he see a day where their mutual dislike of one another was put aside for good and two men who will now be neighbours actually went for dinner together? “I think it will happen naturally,” Guardiola said. “One day I will arrive [in a restaurant] and he will be there. It will be: ‘Hi, how are you?’ He will say hi as well.” Mourinho, one imagines, would be far less inclined to clink glasses if Guardiola is every bit as good as his new employers expect him to be.
