Pep Guardiola

[kalasoma]

Class act. I'll miss hiim and his dulcet Catalan tones. I hope he takes time off and comes back to the game with restored enthusiasm. You could see the man bleeds blaugrana. Be curious to see if Vilanova brings a different style to Barca or continues where Guardiola left off.

[Kennys_spell]

big question is who gets the Barca job? Luis Enrique was said to be lined up for it but he has not really pulled up any trees with Roma who have more money than they have had in a long time although Milan and Juve aside the Italian league is tight and they are still only a few points off 3rd

 

would think an internal appointment would be likely but don't know whos there, the only managers I can think off who immediately spring to mind as up to the top job in the world at the minute are Ferguson and Mourinho both of whom wouldn't be attainable, Rafa has always been linked with Madrid rather than Barca, know it sounds a little bit mad but I wouldn't be all that surprised if Villas Boas gets it if it doesn't go internal or Enrique

 

Puyol seems well placed within his career progression.

[Kennys_spell]

heh

 

The backlash starts HERE kids!

 

*jumps on board*

 

Actually, you can't jump on board a backlash. That's for bandwagons. How can I show support for a backlash?

 

Display the welts with pride!

 

Oh hang on, that's whiplash!

[Evil_Ways]

A years sabatical, i quite doubt it. Would not be surprised to see him at Chelsea or at City sooner rather than later.

[dennis tooth]

How do you explain it? Where is the logic behind Messi not being able to score against Chelsea? It's the magic of football and yes, these types of things do effect even the very best managers, like Guardiola.

 

Do you remember when Zlatan played for Barca? Or the reasons why Eto'o left? Messi is your focal point, you want players making room for him not standing in his way as a typical number 9. What you're asking isn't just a small tweak at all. Eto'o and Villa didn't play centrally for Barca whilst in the team with Messi. What does that tell you? (Also, Messi only established himself as a regular first team player after the CL win in 2006) He hasn't repeated his form for Argentina because there isn't the same platform there for him to perform. That team lacks balance.

 

There's a reason Messi has scored so many goals for Barca, it's because he's the spearhead. You want players who compliment his game, something a typical number 9 doesn't do. You build the team around him and then you have to keep faith with that idea.

 

You're doing Guardiola a disservice because your expectations are not in sync with reality.

 

Agree totally, Eto and Villa used to gravitate to the left side as Henry often used to at Arsenal and to a lesser extent Barca.

Its not as if they struggle scoring goals and like you say they had chances they just didnt finish them. No coach can help that, not Kenny, Not Sep.

[dennis tooth]

Cant believe he's going to go but he mustnt want to ruin his legacy

 

With no money from the top the team is going to struggle due to lack of depth

 

Fair fucks to him for standing up for his beliefs

 

The barca fans will feel like we did when Kenny went back in the day

 

Would love him here but I reckon Romans millions will speak too loud

 

According to the BBC article on him leaving he was due to be handed a vitual unlimited transfer war chest to go to town with so Im not sure where you get your ideas from. That teams got plenty of depth apart from maybe centre back.

 

I reckon they will try to appoint Kenny.

[dennis tooth]

There's nothing to explain about the Chelsea stat. There's no jinx or black magic involved, sometimes these things just happen. It's hardly a jaw-dropping stat anyway, Messi has only played against Chelsea 8 times I think. You'll be able to find lots of top players who have similar barren records against particular teams.

 

Zlatan was the wrong fit for Barca, that's why I deliberately didn't mention him. They'd need a striker who's actually be arsed to run about. I stand by Eto'o as an example though, he certainly did play central for Barca whenever I saw him. I never said Villa did, I know he doesn't and that's presumably the reason why he's rumoured to be unhappy there.

 

I stand corrected about Messi not being a regular starter until after the 2006 win, my memory's let me down there. I just remember him destroying Chelsea in the first leg of the knock-out round, and I'll stick my neck out and say he would have kept his place for the rest of the season if he hadn't done his hamstring in the second leg.

 

This idea of a number 9 "getting in the way" of Messi is ridiculous. It's not as if he's going to stand still on the edge of the box. If anything a dangerous striker would give opposition defences something else to worry about and create more space for Messi. Building the team around one player is a bad idea, what if he gets crocked? It's a team game. Playing a centre forward in the team might lose Barca 20 goals a season from Messi, but if they get the same number of goals back from the striker and are able to vary their play at the same time, that's an improvement overall.

 

If Messi's game is blunted by having a centre forward in the team then maybe he's not the best player in the world after all. Ronaldo is equally effective playing with or without a number 9.

 

 

Those last two paragraphs are why you are the tactically naive one.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

Decides not to renew his rolling one year contract the first year he doesn't win the CL or La Liga. I know he was supposedly contemplating taking a break for a while but as alluded to above I would no be surprised to see him in London or Manchester. Either way the poor sod will be on a shoestring.

[Trumo]

Guardiola approaches the job with such intensity and attention to detail that some sort of burnout is inevitable - something he himself has alluded to. Can he bring success to another team with different types of players to the likes of Messi, Xavi and Iniesta? Who knows. What I will say is that he managed to get them to combine their outstanding attacking qualities with a high-intensity pressing game in a way that still allowed them to flourish individually while all the time adhering to the team ethic. How much of that is simply down to Guardiola's standing at Barcelona (similar to Kenny at Liverpool) and how much of that is down to his ability to get his message across, I don't know. I'd say most of it was down to his coaching ability because messiah status will only get you so far.

[TheHitman]

It was rumored for some time might not renew, it looks like he is genuine in wanting a break from the game. Perhaps we have become used to being so cynical about everything that we always assume people are telling us lies.

 

Anyway I have enjoyed watching his side play football and he comes across as a class act. Hope he gets back in the game when he is recharged. Without question him leading Barca means so much to him than say Jose managing Chelsea, Inter, Madrid etc.

 

Few men have such a bond with one club don't knock it and it seems a bit daft to say he is off to Chelsea, City chasing money or he has bottled it. Sometimes you just have to accept he seems like one of the good guys.

 

 

 

Sid Lowes article on it.

Xavi Hernández had no doubts yet even he was surprised. The day Barcelona announced that Pep Guardiola was going to be their new coach, back in the summer of 2008 after the team had just finished the season empty handed, 18 points behind Real Madrid at the top of La Liga, the midfielder was convinced that change would come. But even he could not have expected quite so much change and quite so quickly. Within 12 months, Barcelona had won a unique treble: the league, the Copa del Rey and the European Cup were theirs. More followed. Much more.

 

"When they signed him I said: 'Madre mía, we're going to be flying,'" Xavi has recalled. "I swear it. He's a perfectionist. If Pep decided to be a musician, he would be a good musician. If he wanted to be a psychologist, he would be a good psychologist. He is obsessive; he would keep going until he got it right. He demands so much from himself. And that pressure that he puts on himself, those demands are contagious – it spreads to everyone. He wants everything to be perfect. He is a pesado." Heavy. Hard-working. Intense.

 

That intensity has led Guardiola to become the most successful coach in Barcelona's history. He has reached four consecutive Champions League semi-finals and won 13 trophies. Two have evaded him in a week in which Barcelona were knocked out of the Champions League by Chelsea and beaten by Real Madrid in the clásico, leaving them seven points behind with four games to play and conceding the title. But there is still a Copa del Rey final to come at the end of the season. Win that and he would have won 14 of 18 competitions.

 

There have been three consecutive league titles and two European Cups in just four years. And before that there was a league title as coach of Barcelona B. "Success" barely does it justice. It was about more than just the success, too, it was about the style. Barcelona were different.

 

So is Guardiola. One of his collaborators describes him as "seductive". It is difficult to do justice to just what he represents for the club. There was a kind of collective holding of breath as the wait to find out his future went on, almost as if the whole of Catalonia was anxiously pacing up and down outside a hospital ward, chewing their nails, waiting for news, watching the hand on the clock stubbornly refuse to move. Few men have represented Barcelona like Guardiola. Perhaps none have, despite the status always afforded to Johan Cruyff – the counter-cultural revolutionary, the rebel and aesthete from whom Guardiola himself took inspiration.

 

When Barcelona reached the 1986 European Cup final, a 15-year-old ballboy raced on to the pitch and pleaded with Victor Muñoz, scorer of the decisive penalty against Gothenburg in the shootout, for his shirt. The ballboy was Guardiola. During one match against Madrid he ran up to the referee and told him he was playing with the emotions of an entire nation, and he was not talking about Spain. When Andrés Iniesta was a kid, there were two posters on his wall at La Masía: one was of Catherine Zeta Jones, the other was Pep Guardiola. Cesc Fábregas still treasures the signed Guardiola shirt he was given as a youth-team player at the club.

 

A Catalan and a product of Barcelona's youth system, the skinny kid plucked from obscurity by Cruyff, Guardiola became the captain having been a member of the Dream Team – the model against which all other Barcelona teams are measured and which Guardiola's team superseded. There is the same commitment to a footballing identity. But it is done even better. The hours are longer, the detail more intense. In a recent speech at the Catalan parliament, where he was awarded the medal of honour, Guardiola described how he hides away in a dark room for hours watching videos before each game, studying and thinking until the eureka moment arrives. "If we all work hard," he said, "we're an unstoppable country."

 

It is not just the talent but the intensity and commitment that make Guardiola. It is the same intensity that has contributed to his departure and the same commitment that contributed to delaying it: the coach was concerned about the impact that his announcement could have. Ultimately, though, the impact upon him was greater. In the end, it was too great. His left-back Eric Abidal has had a liver transplant, his assistant Tito Vilanova has had a tumour removed, he has been hospitalised with back problems. The emotional cost has been as great as the physical one. Managing Barcelona has taken its toll.

 

There has been joy – the praise of some of his players and some of his opponents has gone well beyond the normal platitudes – but there has also been a kind of weariness about Guardiola, especially in the past couple of years. The smile when he notes that he is losing his hair disguises a serious message. Barcelona are a club where the pressure is intense; Guardiola has talked about their being a club of short cycles. He was caught on television calculating that three or four years was a maximum, intimating that his time was "coming to an end".

 

José Mourinho recently said that Pep Guardiola should be given a contract at Barcelona for "50 years". "I thought José loved me more than that!" Guardiola joked. The joke revealed much. The Barcelona job is one that wears a coach down anyway and Guardiola is a coach that dedicates effort and emotion to the role; the importance he gives it, the reverence he has for the club and for football – "The game needs him," Raúl said on Thursday – brings with it a huge fatigue factor.

 

Throw this Madrid, with this manager, this media, this milieu, into the mix and the impact is even greater. Not only have there been internal problems at Barça, not only are Madrid a brilliant team that can push Barcelona all the way to the finish line, keeping the competitive tense up every single week, pushing them to breaking point, but the atmosphere has also changed. The agenda has shifted and the atmosphere has become suffocating. Guardiola and Raúl are friends; Guardiola and Mourinho once were. No more. The disappointment and hurt, the irritation, is palpable. The sadness, the sense of bitterness. That may sound melodramatic, somewhat overemotional, but from Guardiola's point of view it is true.

 

Even the things he did well could be held against him; there were many who threw the compliments back in his face. "Maybe it's true," he said, "maybe I do piss perfume." He may be wrong, he may be sensitive, he is no angel and he is not entirely blameless, but the Barcelona boss has found much of what relentlessly swirls around these clubs incomprehensible and unjust. The accusations and suspicions, the constant tension, the interests, have taken their toll. He was all too aware of the use that could be made of his every word and at times felt powerless to defend himself. The involvement was always huge; now it is just too much. He has found himself pulled into territory in which he is uncomfortable. This is not what he wanted, nor what he proposed. But it is what there is and it is inescapable. When Mourinho insisted that he and Guardiola were the same, the Barcelona coach said: "I will have to revise my behaviour then."

 

Put in simple terms: Pep Guardiola has not often enjoyed the past two years. In the build up to the final one of four clásicos played towards the end of last season, he said: "These have been 18 difficult days." His face revealed just how difficult. A few days before, he had snapped against Mourinho with his now famous rant about how the Portuguese coach was the "puto amo" [the fucking master] in the Bernabéu press conference room. That was planned, controlled. But he has not been able to control his environment as he would like; and being in control is something that has always concerned him. He has turned increasingly to sarcasm. At times it has carried a bitter sting.

 

There was something a little sad about the scene last week. Asked about the meetings between Real Madrid and Barcelona, Guardiola seemed to have forgotten about some of the moments that defined his spell on the Barcelona bench, about the 6-2 and the 5-0, about reaching the Champions League final and claiming the Spanish Super Cup, about some of Leo Messi's most marvellous moments and his own tactical innovations, such as winning at the Bernabéu with three at the back. Instead, he said: "I don't have good memories of them." And when that happens it is time to walk away.

[KevieG]

There are huge echoes of Kenny's first spell in charge around these Guardiola stories. It sounds like he just needs to get out.

 

Barca would do well do give him the year out and leave the door open for next year

[Bjornebye]

He'll be too busy for that

 

[dirk grout]

There are huge echoes of Kenny's first spell in charge around these Guardiola stories. It sounds like he just needs to get out.

 

Barca would do well do give him the year out and leave the door open for next year

 

Please try to actually think about what you are saying. There was an incident at our club that makes this a completely different scenario and not comparable at all.

[PaulMcC]

He didn't say he'll take a year out. Just said he needs a break. Maybe he'll feel refreshed in a few weeks, maybe it'll take a lot longer.

[ngogswilly]

He didn't say he'll take a year out. Just said he needs a break. Maybe he'll feel refreshed in a few weeks, maybe it'll take a lot longer.

 

I reckon he probably will take a break but won't go back to manage them.

 

From everything I've read about him he strikes me as the sort of man that enjoys a good challenge and whilst I'm sure managing Barcelona isn't a stroll in the park, I'd bet he'll be looking for something else in a years time.

[PaulMcC]

I reckon he probably will take a break but won't go back to manage them.

 

From everything I've read about him he strikes me as the sort of man that enjoys a good challenge and whilst I'm sure managing Barcelona isn't a stroll in the park, I'd bet he'll be looking for something else in a years time.

 

I don't think he'll go back to them either.

 

Just saying he didn't day he wanted a year off. People will be giving him grief if after a month off not thinking about football he goes to manage another club.

[silverlining]

There are huge echoes of Kenny's first spell in charge around these Guardiola stories. It sounds like he just needs to get out.

 

Barca would do well do give him the year out and leave the door open for next year

 

The twat lost a few football matches with one of the most expensively-assembled and paid football teams in the world.

 

How many fucking funerals has he been to?

[Bjornebye]

The twat lost a few football matches with one of the most expensively-assembled and paid football teams in the world.

 

How many fucking funerals has he been to?

 

bang on there laa.

 

cunt just wants a rest. fuck all to do with anyone else. let him have a rest.

[Evil_Ways]

It was rumored for some time might not renew, it looks like he is genuine in wanting a break from the game. Perhaps we have become used to being so cynical about everything that we always assume people are telling us lies.

 

Anyway I have enjoyed watching his side play football and he comes across as a class act. Hope he gets back in the game when he is recharged. Without question him leading Barca means so much to him than say Jose managing Chelsea, Inter, Madrid etc.

 

Few men have such a bond with one club don't knock it and it seems a bit daft to say he is off to Chelsea, City chasing money or he has bottled it. Sometimes you just have to accept he seems like one of the good guys.

 

I think he is genuine in his desire to take a break. However i also think he might very well be back before the end of the summer or even earlier, after the Euro's maybe. Obviously not at Barcelona, but at another club.

 

Inter will be looking, Chelsea will be looking unless they win the CL, City will be looking if they dont win the PL. And i reckon Guardiola will be high up on those clubs lists.

[scudger99]

big question is who gets the Barca job? Luis Enrique was said to be lined up for it but he has not really pulled up any trees with Roma who have more money than they have had in a long time although Milan and Juve aside the Italian league is tight and they are still only a few points off 3rd

 

would think an internal appointment would be likely but don't know whos there, the only managers I can think off who immediately spring to mind as up to the top job in the world at the minute are Ferguson and Mourinho both of whom wouldn't be attainable, Rafa has always been linked with Madrid rather than Barca, know it sounds a little bit mad but I wouldn't be all that surprised if Villas Boas gets it if it doesn't go internal or Enrique

 

In Barca's hour of need, Big Sam is ready to fulfill his destiny............

When West Ham fuck him off likes.

[sir roger]

Haven't read all the posts so sorry if I am repeating, but they've given the job to Jose's mate, Tito.

[Jonny83]

[Guest TK-421]

Titotal football.

[TheHitman]

The pic of the observer always makes me smile, apparently he is a long serving Barca employee of 30 years, who became famous following that image.

 

Fans of Fringe will know of the powers of the observer, maybe he knows Guardiola's plans.

Edited April 27, 2012 by TheHitman

[TheHitman]

I think he is genuine in his desire to take a break. However i also think he might very well be back before the end of the summer or even earlier, after the Euro's maybe. Obviously not at Barcelona, but at another club.

 

Inter will be looking, Chelsea will be looking unless they win the CL, City will be looking if they dont win the PL. And i reckon Guardiola will be high up on those clubs lists.

 

The Chelsea and Inter jobs are always available, even when they are not if you catch my drift so no rush to take on those jobs.