What will Pep Guardiola’s next 1,000 games look like?
Pep Guardiola has done a lot with his 1,000 matches as a manager. At Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, he has lifted 40 trophies (including three Community Shields, because why wouldn’t you count them?), yet not even this fact quantifies the way Guardiola has defined an entire era (or two) of the sport.
And he’s working on setting the zeitgeist again. In his 1,000th match in the dugout on Sunday, Guardiola watched his City side dismantle Liverpool in a way that suggests the 54-year-old’s next great team is in the pipeline.
While so many of soccer’s best teams in 2025 are all about the press, Guardiola wants his Manchester City team to find solutions with the ball. Against Liverpool, he fielded three natural creators (Rayan Cherki, Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva) to play through the middle with Jérémy Doku also tucked inside to overload the centre and dribble to his heart’s content. The Premier League champions couldn’t cope.
As if that wasn’t enough for Liverpool to handle, Nico O’Reilly was given the freedom to get forward and take up positions that twisted Liverpool’s Conor Bradley into a knot while Erling Haaland did Erling Haaland things. Even without Rodri, City had full control of the game in the centre of the pitch. It was a complete performance.
Passing in the Premier League is at a 15-year low. Long throws are up 100% and route one soccer is back. Guardiola, though, is attempting to get ahead of the curve. He’s anticipating the next tactical evolution and is doing all he can to ensure his Manchester City team are the ones leading it.
Did the CPL championship game have the craziest-ever conditions for a final?
Sunday’s Canadian Premier League final couldn’t have looked any more Canadian if it had tried. Played in temperatures of -8C (17.6F) amid blizzard conditions, Atlético Ottawa’s extra time win over Cavalry FC was more of a Winter Olympics event than a soccer match. The goalkeepers who used shovels to clear the penalty boxes of snow every 15 minutes could be curling sweepers.
David Rodríguez’s “icicle kick” was the only practical way to score a goal without having to roll the ball through a foot of snow on the ground. While the match went viral, giving the CPL the greatest exposure of its seven-year history, the conditions made the championship game something of a farce. Were Ottawa really the better team or did the snow simply fall in their favour? Was it really fair to crown a champion this way?
No other final has ever been played in conditions like these. The 2018 Copa Libertadores final was moved when torrential rain flooded the pitch at La Bombonera. The 2013 MLS Cup between Sporting KC and Real Salt Lake was the coldest match in league history, played in temperatures of 22F (-6C). None of that compares to the snowy scene in Ottawa on Sunday.
Can Lionel Messi single-handedly win MLS Cup?
Lionel Messi’s 2025 Major League Soccer season has been outstanding. Historic, even. Not that anyone seems to care (certainly not John Muller). Messi might make them care, though. They’d certainly remember if Messi is to win single-handedly win MLS Cup, as is now a possibility after scoring five goals in just three Round One games against Nashville including two in Game 3 to eliminate them.
There were 10 other Inter Miami players on the field, but that barely mattered. Messi took over the series in a way that surely has FC Cincinnati secretly hoping the 38-year-old returns from international duty with Argentina a little banged up for their conference semi-final. It might be the only way anyone in MLS can possibly stop Messi right now.
Over the last two seasons, Inter Miami have done an excellent job of getting in their own way when it matters most. Last year’s shock Round One exit to Atlanta United is widely remembered for Brad Guzan standing on his head (and getting stuck in his net) when in truth Inter Miami’s vulnerability in defensive transition was just as big a reason for their failure.
Against the Seattle Sounders in this year’s Leagues Cup final, Inter Miami faltered once more. They failed to lay a punch on their opponents until they literally did after full-time when the match had already been lost and fisticuffs began. Luis Suárez spat at the Sounders’ head of security to cap the head loss.
If it’s not Suárez losing his cool, it’s Jordi Alba playing with the positional sense of a dog chasing a Frisbee. Or 37-year-old Sergio Busquets lacking the mobility of 27-year-old Sergio Busquets. There are plenty of reasons why Inter Miami won’t win their first MLS Cup, but a bigger reason why they might: Messi has seen everything and decided to do it all himself.
