Paul Dickov was stuck in a meeting in Manchester when his phone started to glow.
Pep Guardiola, fronting up for Manchester City in a press conference a few days after the club was charged with a staggering 115 charges of breaching Financial Fair Play, was engaged in a masterclass in defiance a few miles across the city.
Serious questions about what was to come next were dispatched with the force of Guardiola’s mock incredulity.
When someone raised the prospect of the champions of England being demoted if they were found guilty, he invoked two heroes of City’s previous journeys back from Football League wilderness.
“We will go to the lower division, no problem,” he joked, a trademark smirk lacing the quip with menacing undertones.
“We will call back Paul Dickov, Mike Summerbee and make a good process. We will be back I’m sure.”
Dickov was chatting about his football education programme at the time but had to break off discussions as “hundreds of messages” landed on his phone.
“My phone was beeping all over the place, I thought something was wrong,” he tells i.
“It’s a privilege to get a mention by Pep and shows he knows the history of the club to bring it up in that situation.”
It is a story that tells you much about Guardiola’s extraordinary relationship with City. Those close to him have certainly been surprised by the strength of the bond that has developed since he accepted director of football Txiki Begiristain’s offer to join the club in 2016. His eight-year stint in east Manchester is the longest of his managerial career.
But now, with his contract ending in the summer of 2025, it is crunch time for Guardiola, City and – in many ways – English football.
A name-your-price offer is there for Guardiola to continue breaking records at the Etihad but City are leaving him time and space to make his decision.
The word is he has “earned the right” to make whatever decision he wants to make on whatever timeline he wants. And Guardiola being Guardiola, he is keeping people guessing.
Marti Perarnau, a former Olympic athlete turned journalist, is his unofficial biographer, granted unprecedented access to see him work as background for three engrossing books.
As much as anyone can know Guardiola – memorably described by Spanish football expert Graham Hunter as “one of the most idiosyncratic men in the game” – Perarnau does.
Perarnau doesn’t actually speak publicly that much, regularly turning down requests from English journalists, but six weeks ago he spoke to the popular City podcast 93:20 (the title a reference to the time on the clock when Sergio Aguero scored *that* goal). What he told presenter Ahsan Naeem was illuminating.
“We asked him: ‘When Pep arrived, how long did you think he’d stay?'” Naeem recalls.
“And he said ‘Honestly, everyone around Pep when he arrived expected him to stay for three years’.
“They can’t believe he’s been at City for as long as he’s been but it speaks for the relationship he’s developed with the club, with the hierarchy, with the supporters. We had to ask him what happens next and Marti was very honest. He said his feeling was that he will go.
“He then said something along the lines of ‘Maybe you supporters can change his mind, maybe if he saw a banner in the stadium that said one more year Pep’, it might be something that changes his mind.”
Naeem describes that as a lightbulb moment: “I don’t think we’ve ever articulated the idea to him as supporters that we want him to stay because it’s always taken as read that Guardiola is his own person and will decide for himself.
“We never considered we could have an impact on his thinking but the fact Marti said it got us thinking.”
That conversation was the genesis for the flags draped from the stands at City during last week’s win over Fulham imploring Guardiola to stay.
In tandem with the 1894 Group, who are responsible for the regular, eye-catching fan tifos unveiled at the Etihad, they raised the thousands of pounds required to fund it in just shy of 48 hours.
“Pep Guardiola — Volem que et Quedis!” it read, next to the distinctive red, yellow and blue of the Catalan independence flag.
“We decided to do it in Catalan to make it more personal for Pep,” Naeem explains.
“We had a little bit of money left over and we decided to get a couple of Catalan independence flags made up as well because we know it’s a cause close to Pep’s heart.”
Controversial, too. Naeem hadn’t realised flying that flag is prohibited in Spain, so it being displayed in front of a global Premier League audience drew plenty of coverage back home.
Guardiola was touched, even offering to foot the bill for the flag himself. It feels like it was done right in the nick of time.
City’s hierarchy is enough of a closed shop to keep a lid on behind-the-scenes machinations but i has been told by several sources active in recruitment in the Premier League and overseas that the word in executive circles is Guardiola’s decision could be imminent.
Certainly few expect him to let it linger into 2025, especially with some big recruitment calls to plan for in January after Rodri’s season-ending injury.
The November international break – which would give the club plenty of time for an orderly transition if he decides to go – feels like an appropriate juncture for an announcement.
“There’s a real jostling for position feeling in certain circles,” one Premier League director of football told i.
“If Pep goes, everything changes for some clubs right at the top. It’s bigger than Sir Alex [Ferguson] going because City are more dominant and feel more invincible than Manchester United did then.
“But I’m not sure if anyone knows, not even Pep, even if he delivers his decision in a week or two.”
i has been told that Guardiola was in Dubai this week, a break that coincided with news of Begiristain’s imminent departure. His exit after 12 trophy-laden years naturally feels significant in light of the pair’s close personal relationship and Guardiola’s own big decision.
While there is a serious end of an era feeling about the departure of Begiristain, a man who did more than anyone to build City’s dynasty, sources say his decision is not related to Guardiola’s and has been in the works for “a while”. The club swiftly lining up Sporting Lisbon’s sporting director Hugo Viana to take over was done with Guardiola’s knowledge and feels significant.
Ruben Amorim, the highly-rated Sporting Lisbon coach who was in the running to take over at Liverpool last year before opting to stay in Portugal, is said to be ready for a new challenge and if Guardiola does leave it is a move that would make sense.
But as the Reds showed in the summer when they stepped away from the seemingly obvious move for Bayer Leverkusen’s Xabi Alonso, nothing is certain.
“The really intelligent clubs – and Manchester City are one of them – are now doing continuous succession planning,” Alex Stewart of Analytics FC, who run their own coach ID service for clubs in England and Europe, tells i.
For football’s smartest operators it is no longer a case of reacting to the market when you have a vacancy.
“City have a very, very comprehensive data provision internally,” Stewart says.
“They will be across data in every aspect of what they do and future manager planning will be a big part of that.”
As part of that world, Stewart reels off some of the data they will be drilling into in detail: counter-press, ability to control games, pass length and direction and press aggression are among the performance indicators City will have looked at.
Turning thousands of hours of footage and millions of data points into a stylistic assessment of coaching candidates is a major piece of work but the logic is that it should deliver a coach capable of maintaining City’s “elite” and unique style of play.
Three names come out at the top in the Analytics FC assessment: Julian Nagelsmann (“Young, matches the style of play and with the charisma to take over from Pep”), Vincent Kompany and Paris Saint-Germain’s Thiago Motta.
“City is full of very smart people and there’ll be a degree of realism at the club I think,” Stewart says.
“They’ve not just got the best coach at the moment, they’ve got one of the best coaches in the history of football.”
At City there remains hope of retaining him. There aren’t many other jobs that could tempt him in club football and while the Football Association view him as a dream candidate, England offers minimal contact time for an obsessive like Guardiola.
One more year – taking them through the storm of the 115 charges fallout – is a familiar refrain at the Etihad and fans have spotted signs that he might not be done just yet.
“I do think his stance softened since the summer,” Naeem tells i.
“There was a feeling among his inner circle 12 months ago that this was going to be his last season but I think I believe him when he says a lot of it depends on his players.
“He looks around the dressing room, sees them not letting standards slip, winning the fourth title on the bounce, dealing with adversity in the manner they did and on top of that the development of Phil Foden and Rico Lewis.
“Something that struck me when [Jurgen] Klopp left was they asked him how he felt and his body language was not that of a man who really isn’t done with coaching.
“If you look back at the great coaches, towards the end of their time you feel like they were getting towards the end of their time and Pep hasn’t felt like that.”
Guardiola will also know that with City’s independent commission to deliver a verdict in early 2025, his decision will be viewed as hugely significant. He has made it clear he backs and believes the club’s forthright protestations of innocence.
“I doubt his decision will be about the charges but who knows? He’s not a normal character,” Stefan Borson, City fan and legal expert, tells i.
“He’s in an elite group of leaders like Sir Alex Ferguson was – he’s a force of nature. Anything is possible.”
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/csGyQHZ
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