The description of someone as a genius is dished out plentifully in football discourse. At one time or another, an instance can be found when almost any elite-level player has been described by pundits, commentators and fans as one. Kevin De Bruyne, Harry Kane, Neymar. Trent Alexander-Arnold was described as a genius when he was 19 years old.
In reality, under scrutiny of what constitutes the geniuses of our world, they would not even come close. Yet the same could not be said of Pep Guardiola.
Is Manchester City’s manager a genius? It is a question perhaps impossible to answer fully and decisively at this time but one that, given his unprecedented success in multiple countries, warrants exploring. Certainly he is not far off, sharing many traits of geniuses who have marked history.
Surprisingly, they tend to be slow developers, not always demonstrating the most promise academically, often overlooked by teachers and mentors. American author and academic Walter Isaacson has spent years studying and documenting the lives of geniuses. In his book about Albert Einstein – Einstein: His Life and Universe – he wrote that the theoretical physicist learned to speak so late, his parents sought medical help and that house staff referred to him as “der Depperte” – the dopey one. As he grew older, Einstein didn’t take well to authority and a teacher once said he would never amount to much.
Guardiola was a good young footballer – good enough to be part of Barcelona’s La Masia academy – but he wasn’t that good: he could not nail down a position, was more of a utility player, slotting in where required. He was not as strong as his peers, too skinny, too slow. Then Johan Cruyff paid a visit to one of his youth matches and everything changed.
Barcelona’s first-team manager, only a week into the job, spotted in this gangly teen something that put him ahead of his team-mates: his mind. Guardiola could think faster than them.
In Phil Ball’s book, Morbo: The Story of Spanish Football, he tells the story of Cruyff turning up at a youth match and telling the manager, Charly Rexach, to put the right-side midfielder into defensive midfield. The defensive pivot is the hardest position to play tactically, most young players can’t do it, but Guardiola excelled there.
Brought into Barcelona’s first team by Cruyff, he would spend the remainder of his career winning trophies and enhancing the world’s best players around him with his passing and composure. Improving footballers around him remains one of his greatest strengths as a manager.
Guardiola can be fractious with authority figures too – unafraid to criticise City’s owners when they signed up for the failed breakaway Super League, and clashing with the Football Association when it fined him for wearing a yellow ribbon in support of imprisoned Catalan politicians.
All geniuses have a ferocious curiosity and will travel great lengths, physically and emotionally, to pursue it. Steve Jobs, the Apple founder whose technological ideas are all around us, visited India as a teenager and threaded his spiritual and philosophical learning throughout his life’s work. Jobs, a college drop-out, made art and aesthetics central to his creations, which turned Apple into a lifestyle.
When Guardiola was nearing the end of his playing career, he made a seemingly peculiar move to a little-known club in Mexico. It was 2005 and he had offers from Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City – three years before Sheikh Mansour would take over and transform them into the club the midfielder would one day manage.
Instead, Guardiola chose Dorados de Sinaloa, a recently formed and chaotic Mexican franchise. What brought Guardiola all the way to a city in Mexico’s northwest was Juanma Lillo, a guy he considered a genius amongst coaches, who became the youngest person to manage in La Liga when he led UD Salamanca to promotion, aged 29.
Lillo, 55, is one of football’s most complex and controversial characters: hired and fired quickly and often, enduring lengthy spells out of the game. Employers have sacked him for results, purists adore him for his philosophy.
He first crossed Guardiola’s radar in 1996, when the midfielder was playing under Sir Bobby Robson against Lillo’s Oviedo. Barcelona won the match, but Guardiola was fascinated by how their opponents had outplayed them in the first half, and introduced himself to their coach afterwards.
A quarter of a century later, Lillo would become Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City, after Mikel Arteta had left the post to manage Arsenal last year, and Lillo will be by Guardiola’s side at the Estadio do Dragao during tonight’s Champions League final.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s curiosity was such that he saw new ways of understanding and questions everywhere he looked, filling notepads with his thoughts and ideas. Why do people yawn? How does a crocodile’s jaw work? What is the edge of a shadow?
Guardiola’s younger brother, Pere, described his sibling as “almost obsessive” in an interview with German news website Der Spiegel in 2013. Guardiola sees room for improvement and faults where others see trophy-winning superstar players.
When Guardiola took a sabbatical in New York in 2012, worn out by four years of intense success at Barcelona, Pere received calls on a daily basis about his brother’s next move. Guardiola, meanwhile, in anticipation of his next project, watched on TV all the matches featuring Manchester City, Chelsea and Bayern Munich.
It was a surprise when manager Jupp Heynckes delivered the treble with Bayern the season before Guardiola arrived. An impossible act to follow, people thought. But Guardiola is credited with improving those players further, turning Philipp Lahm into the complete footballer. That they dominated German football was not a surprise, but the new fluency of play proved Guardiola’s time in Barcelona was no fluke.
He could not, however, deliver the Champions League – despite reaching the semi-finals three times in a row – causing his time in Germany to be questioned.
Ultimately, a genius has to be remembered. Otherwise they did not indent the fabric of time enough to matter. Not, in Guardiola’s case, merely by football fans, but becoming a name that will be recognised universally.
Guardiola has transcended his sport. He dines with chess grandmasters, campaigns for political causes, dances on stage like his bones are made of jelly in videos that go viral.
Most people will have heard of Einstein, Da Vinci, Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking and the other great minds. Will the same be said of Guardiola in 100 years’ time? He is perhaps not there yet, but could be. He is 50 years old, there are many ahead.
He has won almost everything with clubs in Spain, Germany and England, where he will complete the set if he beats Chelsea in the Champions League final.
There remain unexplored frontiers. Italy is the obvious one, where he has not managed. France, too. He has not coached a national team, in a World Cup or European Championship. He admires Lillo for taking jobs at mid-table clubs or relegation candidates. Could that be the left-field move for the twilight of his managerial career?
Could Guardiola really succeed without the financial support he has had throughout his time as a manager? Making that work would, surely, be genius.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2SvSdyV
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