Good luck then, Mateo Kovacic.
The Croatia midfielder joins Manchester City with the most daunting of remits: replacing the irreplaceable.
Kovacic’s Etihad move was confirmed on the day Ilkay Gundogan left for Barcelona, which was slightly unfortunate timing for a man arriving with a relatively modest £25m price tag.
The former Chelsea midfielder is a fine player who arrives at the behest of Pep Guardiola himself, but there is no one that will be able to replicate the role and impact of Gundogan, a modern-day club legend.
The German did a bit of everything for Guardiola, who prized his ability to create space and dictate the tempo in the most important of matches.
But he was also a scorer of crucial goals and a technician of the highest quality, able to transfer his skills across the pitch as everything from a deep-lying midfielder to a false number nine depending on what City required.
Letting him leave will prompt a tactical reset from Guardiola, who has Kovacic but also wants West Ham’s Declan Rice to join a midfield recalibration. In truth, he desperately wanted Gundogan to stay as well.
Gundogan signed for Barcelona on Monday on a two-year deal with the option of a third. City had offered one year with the option of a second which Gundogan, who has a young family, did not feel offered the security he needed.
City say they pushed their self-imposed financial parameters to the boundaries to try and secure a deal. It is increasingly rare for elite clubs to offer 32-year-olds long-term deals – and will become even less so as the short-term shock of Saudi Arabia’s recruitment drive becomes more embedded in the recruitment ecosystem.
But still, there is the strange feeling that this could be a rare misstep from a club whose player trading has been close to peerless in the last few seasons.
Guardiola was certainly of the opinion that Gundogan is irreplaceable, reportedly telling friends visiting from Catalonia back in April after the 4-1 defeat of Liverpool that he simply wouldn’t countenance losing the Germany midfielder this summer.
He has been seemingly overruled by director of football Txiki Begiristain, who stuck to the bigger sky-blue blueprint. And when that plan has delivered footballers like Erling Haaland, perhaps Guardiola is best advised to trust the process.
304 appearances
— Manchester City (@ManCity) June 26, 2023
60 goals
40 assists
5 Premier Leagues
1 UCL
2 FA Cups
4 EFL Cups
2 Community Shieldspic.twitter.com/o81N1urk3y
But Guardiola isn’t just losing a midfield metronome, he is also losing the quiet authority that made Gundogan one of City’s dressing room leaders.
In a piece penned for the Player’s Tribune after his departure was confirmed there was plenty of insight into why he was so popular with his teammates. In typically understated fashion he picked out Scott Carson and Stefan Ortega as two of the most important players in the squad, also emphasising the togetherness of the Treble winners that had been forged in team barbecues organised largely by wives and partners.
Guardiola’s City have proved particularly resilient to high-profile departures in recent years, absorbing the loss of the likes of Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Vincent Kompany to become better.
The loss of Gundogan, though, might be as big a test as any of them.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/v8S6Ybp
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