Guardiola and his Midas touch bid farewell to Manchester City

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You wouldn’t get much of an argument anywhere that Josep (Pep) Guardiola is the emblematic, as well as the best, sports coach of the 21st century. Sunday marked his final day in charge of Manchester City.

When you’re at Guardiola’s level, you don’t do contract standoffs or maudlin farewells. He publicly quit on a Friday and will be gone by the Monday. He gave no reasons. Everyone assumes he wearied of the task.

Beginning after his playing career ended, aged 36, Guardiola took over the B-team of his most famous club, Barcelona. That was 2007. A year later, he assumed control of the senior squad. He made a lot of smart decisions at Barcelona, the cleverest of which was agreeing to manage a team that already had Lionel Messi.

Guardiola is highly praised as a tactical genius, but he was even better at the hardest job of a modern coach – neutering the egos around him.

At first, it was possible for a slightly older contemporary to dominate younger, better talents. After a while, his growing reputation allowed him to overwhelm more senior players. Eventually, he was able to stare anyone down.

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Guardiola’s public presentation was always light – it helps that he’s so unthreateningly good looking – but the message was always heavy. Win, or else.

He was a maniac for physical fitness, and through it mastered the art of negging. One of his favourite compliments was that someone had excelled in training. But if you failed, it was often because you were too fat. Both judgments were delivered lightly, like Guardiola was commenting on the competence of someone’s parallel parking.

Eventually, to be dismissed by Guardiola was to be dismissed, full stop. Players, even the most blinkered, self-centred ones, would do anything to avoid that.

Guardiola also had the sense never to linger too long. He left Barcelona after five years, having won everything there was to win, to go on sabbatical. That was the word he used. He was 41 years old and far and away the most employable coach in the world. He took a year off to swan around New York City – the last place on Earth he could blend into a crowd.

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The reaction to that decision was bafflement. Apparently, Guardiola was the first person in his position with hobbies. He didn’t need football to keep himself occupied, which made everyone in football need him.

Next up, Bayern Munich. Same story. Didn’t know anything about German football, won just about every trophy in sight, left after three years because he was bored. Then on to England.

Abu Dhabi oil money began to flow into Manchester City in 2008. The roster was the most expensively assembled ever, but also incorrigible. They could win, but they couldn’t be controlled. Aside from floating bigger and bigger cheques, there was no vision.

Guardiola arrived in 2016, better paid and more respected than his charges, and changed that. He turned City into the world’s most lavishly appointed gladiator academy.

If you had a great month, you’d be rewarded with a steady starting role. If you had a bad half, you’d ride the bench for three games. Complain about it, and it was all thanks for your efforts, best of luck in wherever it is you’re headed.

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No favourites. No penned in spots on the roster. Everyone either works or they go. The list of players Guardiola has driven out over the years – Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Samuel Eto’o, Yaya Touré – would make a formidable all-time starting XI.

Guardiola was free to make any decision he wanted because he won.

He was never particularly quotable in English, a language he arrived in Manchester decently proficient in, but never seemed to improve on. You got the sense that that was also a tactic. The one that gets the most play: “In football, the worst things are excuses.”

Modern coaches and executives are full of excuses, usually preceded by the line, “This isn’t an excuse, but …” Unexpected injuries, tough schedule, Mars transiting Venus.

Guardiola’s contribution to the ethos of coaching was the removal of excuses from his players (it was assumed he was always working harder than them). He mastered a pragmatic ruthlessness that has proved difficult to implement elsewhere. Because players elsewhere did not fear their coach’s judgment as they feared Guardiola’s. He’d had Lionel Messi at his best. Who were you next to that?

Guardiola was the coach for the age of capital run amok in sport – a winner who picks winners and delivers winners. A sure thing. A guy who gives off the air of winning, even when he’s just lost. A class act who, you strongly suspect, is also a total maniac and the worst enemy you could ever make.

Every league wants to create its own Guardiolas, but can’t. So much of what he did was down to luck in timing. Had the Barcelona job not been open. Had Messi not already been on hand. Had he not started wearing those form-fitting turtlenecks.

Every career is the sum of a few pivotal choices, good or bad. Guardiola has never rolled a seven professionally. He’s never made a terrible decision. Even after City was dinged up on charges of financial manipulation, and though everyone knows he runs everything, it never touched Guardiola.

He leaves with his reputation not only intact, but still growing. He has managed three of the biggest clubs in the world, had a golden era with all of them and left them all on his own terms.

Guardiola is only 55 years old, and has said nothing about next steps. If this were it, he would eventually be thought of as the greatest sports leader ever. He’d be Rocky Marciano in cashmere.

But these sorts of compulsive high achievers can never leave great enough alone. The question isn’t whether Guardiola returns. It’s whether or not his luck holds once he does.