Guardiola

[Cornish Steve]

I'd like to see him win a Champions League or Division title with a mid table side..

That's what RM will be doing over the next two years.

[Avinalaff]

That's what RM will be doing over the next two years.

 

He's going to Stoke?

[Peter H]

Guardiola did a very strange thing in the last game vs Mainz. BM were given a penalty and Robben took the ball to get ready for the pen. Guardiola stepped in and told Robben to give the ball to Müller instead. In front of 80 000 people. Kinda degrading for Robben.

 

http://www.goal.com/en/news/15/germany/2013/10/21/4348225/effenberg-slams-schoolteacher-guardiola?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[MikeO]

Guardiola did a very strange thing in the last game vs Mainz. BM were given a penalty and Robben took the ball to get ready for the pen. Guardiola stepped in and told Robben to give the ball to Müller instead. In front of 80 000 people. Kinda degrading for Robben.

 

 

Depends whether Müller is his designated penalty taker. If he is then Robben shouldn't have tried to take it in the first place so it was the right thing to do.

[Peter H]

If a player is hot and has already scored one you shouldn't mess with his mojo Players steal penalties from each other all the time. If they miss they should get a bollocking, behind closed doors. Not in front of 80 000.

Edited October 22, 2013 by Peter H

[Hafnia]

If a player is hot and has already scored one you shouldn't mess with his mojo Players steal penalties from each other all the time. If they miss they should get a bollocking, behind closed doors. Not in front of 80 000.

 

Robben has got to be one of the most selfish players I have seen. Doesn't surprise me. It can be an attribute, but with him....

[Sibdane]

Robben is a prick, but I love watching him play minus the diving. I can see him trying to take the ball from the designated penalty taker. Hot streak or not, why practice set pieces or penalties with a designated taker if a teammate is just going to go against it? I think it's right for the coach to establish authority and not allow a player to be bigger than the team.

 

Of course, this is all speculation and is contingent on if there was a designated taker or not.

Edited October 22, 2013 by TonkaRoost

[Guest Nikica]

There's a lot of people out there who think he's overrated and that anyone could have did the job he did at Barca with those players...this despite the fact that he cut the problem individuals from a decaying dressing room (how many would have been brave enough to sell Ronaldinho in his pomp?), turned Messi into a false nine, and made Barca a better pressing team again. Xavi went up a level under his stewardship (despite already being world-class, he's now legendary class), and Iniesta stepped up too. All of this and some other subtle alterations turned Barca into the best club team since Sacchi's Milan. It shouldn't be a surprise as Guardiola was one of the best midfielders in the world in his playing prime. From a tactical viewpoint, he understands football more than many.

 

He made mistakes too of course, and he has his weaknesses. However, he's always been a fantastic manager and it's incorrect when people say Barca didn't need a special manager to win what they did and play as they did. He's proving himself again at Bayern, where he's actually playing Lahm as a midfielder often, and it's working. I thought that he might be tempted to play Martinez as a CB and Gotze (Judas cunt) as a false 9, but so far that hasn't materialised. Whether it will later in the season when Gotze is injury-free and more of a regular is anyone's guess.

 

I see there's a bit of debate comparing him to Mourinho above. Mourinho is a great manager too, of course, but I'd have Guardiola every time. Mourinho's teams are generally pretty negative (other than when he had the Real Madrid superstars, and even then he tended to shut up shop versus Barca, like Ancelotti did today). His teams often play shocking football, and it's easier to achieve results playing like that than it is by playing the gorgeous football which Barca did under Pep. Furthermore, it can be argued that Jose failed at Real Madrid - he won the title in his second season yes, but the main reason for that is that Pep (ironically after me praising him in this post) was experimenting with a 343 to try and shoehorn the newly signed Fabregas into the team. I watch a fair bit of Spanish football and the difference in Barca after he abandoned this experiment was stark, but the damage had already been done due to dropping points away from home in the first half of the season. However, RM won in Camp Nou towards the end of that season to more or less seal the title, so kudos to Mourinho for that.

 

In the Champions League you have to say that RM did not do themselves justice, and much of the responsibility for that lies with Mourinho. He played far too defensively in the first leg Clasico in 2011. Yes, Barca were astonishing at that time, but you're asking for trouble if you try and kick them off the park in your own stadium in the first leg of a CL semi. The performance over the two legs against Bayern in the following year was pretty poor as well - Bayern were the better team in both legs and making it to penalties flattered Real. Dortmund hammered them in the first leg last season because Klopp outsmarted Jose. They should have redeemed things in the second leg but they fell short. I thought they'd lose all three ties but given the talent they possess(ed), it's reasonable to suggest that they should have made the final in one of the three semis. As for his first and third 'challenges' for the La Liga title - well, to even call them challenges is being extremely kind. Oh, and let's not forget that he lost the dressing room about halfway through his tenure.

 

Ultimately, they're both fantastic managers with their own strengths and weaknesses, but it's pretty obvious which of them plays better football, has a stronger grasp of tactics, and is the classier human being - and it's not Mourinho.

 

Oh, and both of Mourinho's CL wins were fortunate. Benefited from a poor decision at Old Trafford with Porto (not that I am complaining as I hate the Mancs) then played a hopeless Monaco team in the final. As for Inter, they scored an offside goal versus Barca in the San Siro and Alves should have had a penalty. Then, in the second leg, Bojan scored with the last kick of the ball, but the goal was ruled out for a phantom handball - that goal would have sent Barca to the final. All people remember from that game is the Busquets play-acting which led to Motta's sending off (because the media zoned in on that and many people take their cue from said media), but the last-gasp goal being disallowed was criminal. So yeah, Mourinho has been on the receiving end of a lot of good fortune, so let's not pretend he's some sort of messiah who's performed miracles. Ultimately neither he or Guardiola are likely to be remembered as amongst the greatest of all time but Pep is the superior manager, in my opinion.

Edited October 27, 2013 by Nikica

[Guest Nikica]

Pep did not speak to Ibrahimovic when Messi wanted to play up front. He couldnt even look Ibra in the eyes, didnt tell him why he wasnt getting game time and all of this after Ibra became the most successful first season player for Barca ever. He dropped him and could not face telling him the truth, that Messi is a spoilt little bitch that became jealous of the attention Ibra was getting.

 

Barca had to sell Ibra at a massive loss and bough David Villa, another puppet for the Barca circus. Villa wasnt half the striker Ibra was at the time and it showed.

 

Guardiola is a puppet and a muppet. Anyone would win with Barca and the same goes for BM. Give Pep a team like Spurs or Arsenal and he would choke. Give him players like Ronaldo, Ibra, Balotelli and he will get scared shitless. Cant handle difficult characters.

 

Villa was the best pure striker in the world for years imo, and performed brilliantly as an inverted left winger in his first season. With Messi playing false 9 it was vital that Barca had two brilliant inverted wide men, and Pedro and Villa fulfilled this role to the maximum. Villa's decline came after his broken leg early in the following season. Ibra is brilliant but it's extremely debatable that he was better than Villa back in 2010 or 2011 - in my opinion he wasn't, and at Barca it showed.

 

Zlatan is great but he was absolutely shocking at times for Barca. I remember watching one game, and can't remember who it was against, but Messi scored two amazing goals, one a run from the halfway line - it may have been Zaragoza but it was definitely an away game. Anyway, Messi was laying chance after chance on a plate for Zlatan and he was missing them. I think he even let Zlatan take a penalty and he missed that too. Ibra was short on confidence for most of his time at Barca, although we all know he had his issues with Guardiola. In saying that, Barca wouldn't have won the league that season if not for Ibra's stunning volley in the 1-0 win over RM at Camp Nou, so he did make an important contribution to their title win.

 

Whether Ibra was a better player than Villa at the time is open to debate (I personally think he wasn't, as stated above), but what is clear is that Villa was a far better fit for that Barca team - an opinion which is reinforced by how brilliant the 2010-2011 team was. Messi clearly enjoyed playing as a false 9 and Villa was a far better candidate to play wide left than Zlatan would ever be. It was the right thing to do, although arguably the right thing would have been never doing the Zlatan for Eto'o plus cash deal in the first place, especially as the latter proved he could play wide under Mourinho at Inter. However, Eto'o was a problem in the dressing room and we all know Guardiola does not tolerate that.

 

Finally, I agree with you that Messi seems to be a little dictator. I think he's comfortably the best player in the world right now, but I hate the way the press paints him as some sort of angel. They do the same with Beckham yet it's clear that both men have skeletons in their closet and have a history of narcissistic behaviour.

Edited October 27, 2013 by Nikica

[Guest Nikica]

Yeah I thought what I meant was obvious but I'll try to make it clearer

 

He must take the credit of course for finding the perfect way to utilise Messi (although let's be honest, he's good everywhere), for promoting players from the cantera, for taking advantage of the fact that they had been playing possession football since they were young, etc. These are no small feats. But people seem to credit him with creating this high pressing, possession based tiki-taka football that Barcelona are now known for, when this philosophy had been present at the club at all levels for years. Most of the players he started had already had years to gel as well (again, he knew this and that's why he selected them).

 

As for Mourinho and "after that he was not exactly given chopped liver to work with". Well, no he wasn't, but like I said above it was on merit because he won the Champions League with Porto, and he was also given the Porto job because he did well with Leiria.

 

Yes, Guardiola simply continued Cruyff's work, but then Cruyff simply continued what was predominantly Michels's work, and Michels was influenced by men before himself too...

 

My point is that football - particularly tactically - is generally a game of evolution rather than revolution. It's unfair to penalise Guardiola for being influenced by men from the past given that it's very rare to find genuinely revolutionary concepts. Had Guardiola implemented genuinely revolutionary tactics then perhaps Barca wouldn't have been so successful and entertaining. Generally the best entities or institutions are those who are influenced by their predecessors' ideas whilst installing subtle alterations to said ideas to fit their own era.

 

I do agree however that Mourinho earned the Chelsea and RM jobs. I have liked both of your posts in here.

 

Regarding the point about Guardiola having to go to a mid-table club and win something, where do we draw the line here? Does Messi have to go to Fulham to win something and prove his greatness? I don't think Messi will ever be as good as Maradona, but as great as Diego was (and I think he's the greatest player of all time) a few of his achievements are slightly romanticised i.e Argentina weren't an 'average' team in 1986, they were simply good. They wouldn't have won the World Cup without him, and many say that he in 1986 and Garrincha in 1962 are the closest any one man has ever come to winning the World Cup single-handedly, but that doesn't change the fact that it was hardly him and 10 shite players. Furthermore, his achievements at Napoli were fantastic (especially given that 80s Serie A was probably the strongest European league ever, and definitely the best defensively) but Napoli are still one of the most supported clubs in Italy. They weren't the small club people claim they were, and they did have other quality players like Ferrara and Careca. Maradona was an alien but whilst what he did in 1986 and for Napoli was incredible, those achievements are spoken of in slightly hyperbolic terms. And that's coming from a Maradona fanboy such as myself.

 

Other than the above, it's completely unrealistic to think that Messi or Guardiola have to win something at an average team, imo. The main reason for this is that the globalisation of football in the last two decades has created a wider chasm in quality than ever before; the very best players are now concentrated amongst a small number of European clubs, and the rest have absolutely no chance. You'll never see a team like Forest rise to win the European Cup again - look at the way traditionally strong European clubs like Ajax, Celtic and many from Eastern Europe have been destroyed by football's capitalist spike. Most leagues are destroyed, whilst the smaller clubs in the top leagues have no chance of CL qualification anyway as they're competing with commercial behemoths. If you dropped Messi in the Aston Villa or Getafe team tomorrow they'd still have no chance of winning the league.

 

By the way, sorry for not using the multi-quote system - it's being temperamental for me.

Edited October 27, 2013 by Nikica

[marcus jones]

Nice to see you back Nikica!

[Guest Nikica]

Nice to see you back Nikica!

 

Thank you mate. I hope you're well