Guardiola to stay at City

Sport

With Director of Football Txiki Begiristain announcing his departure and four defeats on the bounce heading into the November international break, it has become easy to push the narrative of crisis at Manchester City in recent weeks.

Because Begiristain, a close friend of Pep Guardiola who both played with him and hired him as coach at Barcelona, was so key to bringing him to the Etihad Stadium in 2016, there was an assumption Guardiola would leave this summer. His current deal expires at the end of the season, and there was a growing sense that he may end his association with City at this juncture. That was certainly the hope of many of their rivals, anyway.

Although it is yet to be announced, Guardiola has reportedly signed a new one-year deal with the option of a further year, with City. It has shattered perceptions and hopes everywhere, and also shows the uniqueness of his status within football. It is hard to think of any other coach who could lose four games in a row and still choose to sign a new deal on his terms. But that’s what winning four Premier League titles in a row, six in total, does.

There can be no getting away from it, Guardiola’s tactical knowledge, innovation, and also his drive and determination are the main factors in City’s recent dominance. It is astoundingly good news for them, and a complete disaster for Liverpool, Arsenal and others, that he will remain in the Premier League; without him, it would almost certainly level out.

It is hard to know whether this news will have any impact on the charges against City from the Premier League. One thing both Guardiola and the club have faced is an accusation of buying success; although the wealth of City and every club Guardiola has been in charge of cannot be denied, it takes little more than a cursory glance at their lack of dominance before he arrived and his career to understand how little substance that claim has.

Although the squad is packed with quality, perhaps Erling Haaland aside, it is hard to make a case for anyone having the star quality of Guardiola himself. Kevin De Bruyne was mocked widely for the £54m fee City paid for him in 2015, just over a year after his poor spell at Chelsea came to an end, and Rodri, the newly crowned winner of the Ballon d’Or, was hardly known the world over like he is now. City barely lose when he plays and their current form has a lot to do with his recovery from a serious knee injury, but nobody foresaw such an impact when he joined from Atlético Madrid.

City’s team is not full of Galácticos, it has been built carefully in Guardiola’s image, adapting and changing as his approach does. If he leaves, and when he does, the team may struggle to react because he has had such an impact. Before he joined, neither Roberto Mancini nor Manuel Pellegrini, backed by the same financial muscle, managed to achieve anything close to what he has.

The idea he hasn’t helped develop world class talent and only buys it conveniently ignores the inherent issues he faced as a 38-year-old in his first job at Barcelona, and how he shifted the focus onto academy players, many of whom, like Pedro and Sergio Busquets, got their break under him. It was he who put Lionel Messi on the path to immortality, before helping the likes of Joshua Kimmich and Phil Foden on their way subsequently at Bayern or City.

The news that Guardiola is staying at City is huge and will shock those who need him to leave. It is he who has changed the landscape of English football, not City and their money alone. He is the difference; if he stays for two years rather than one, perhaps he can find a contingency plan to continue City’s golden era as his legacy. He can certainly rebuild a team once again.

But whatever happens when he does leave, the blue half of Manchester will feel the pinch. Guardiola’s time in England has been every bit as revolutionary as Sir Alex Ferguson’s across the city, albeit in a different way.