By Yusuf Bangura
Manchester City won the English Premier League (EPL) yesterday by defeating West Ham 3-1. A draw or win by West Ham would have handed the title to Arsenal, who trailed City by just two points and have played remarkable football this season. This victory means City have now won the EPL title four times in a row (an incredible record in a league that’s touted as the most competitive in the world) and six titles in seven years. They are clearly the dominant force in English football in the last ten years.
Pep Guardiola: The Football Philosopher and Master-Tactician
Although I’m not a conventional club fan, I’ve supported Man City since Pep Guardiola was appointed their manager in 2016, because of the brand of football he plays. I became attracted to his football during his period at Barcelona, in 2008-12, when he won three La Liga titles in a row and two champions league cups within four years. Before he got the Barcelona job, he was a junior league rookie, with only one year of coaching experience with the Barcelona B team.
Guardiola’s Barcelona team at the senior level played the best football that I’ve ever seen: ‘take-the-ball-pass-the ball’ or one-two passes, playing from the back, high pressing, exploiting small spaces, creating triangles, wearing down opponents with endless passes, using a false-9 or striker (i. e. playing without a striker), coaching his players to play in multiple positions, and transforming the goalkeeper into an outfield player (player-sweeper).
Watching Barcelona during the Guardiola years was magical. I watched more La Liga than EPL matches during his reign at Barca. His Barca team beat the mighty Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in two Champions League finals (2009 and 2011). Those are memorable finals, whose highlights I still watch even today. In my opinion, Ferguson’s stock as a world class coach crashed with those two defeats.
The 2011 final was simply out of this world; it was football at its utmost best. I’ve not seen football played as an art form the way the Barca central and forward players (Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Villa and Pedro), supported by their back line (Alves, Maschareno, Piqué, and Abidal) dazzled Man United in that match. The Barca players looked like men against boys even though most were diminutive.
When Ferguson was once asked to name a team that was closest to a Dream Team, he did not hesitate to name Barcelona. He was quoted as saying: “The one that had made the biggest impression on me is the Barcelona we faced at Wembley, with United, in the 2011 Champions League final. They were unplayable”. That team played football like PlayStation football.
Guardiola always credits the famous Dutch player and Barca coach, Johan Cryuff, as his mentor or the pioneer of his football ideas. However, if Cruyff was the inventor, Pep is the master-tactician who fine-tuned the ideas and developed them into a system of play that consistently wins games. Watching his teams play is like watching a conductor and his orchestra or a well-choreographed football philosophy in action.
Many teams around the world now try to imitate his style of play. The great Italian defender, Georgio Chiellini, even accused Guardiola in 2017 of destroying Italian football, which he believed had abandoned its traditional strength of conventional defending by trying to copy Guardiola’s methods and playing from the back.
Guardiola Proves His English Critics Wrong
When Guardiola arrived in England in 2016, pundits believed that his cerebral approach to the game would not work in the English League, which emphasises physicality, hard tackles, and long balls. Journalists laughed off his remarks in his first year when he said he did not train his players to tackle. Tackles are unnecessary if you have skillful players who know how to keep the ball and press. He was seen as a naive softie who stood no chance of impacting the English game.
His coaching style was primarily about possession, high pressing, and finding small spaces—which were alien to English football. When he ended the 2016 season without a trophy (the first time in his career) and City finished third on the table, pundits dismissed him as a failure and urged him to change his approach if he wanted to remain in the league.
But a philosopher does not bow to popular, uninformed opinions. He stood his ground, and has silenced his critics with his unique style of play by winning four titles in a row and six in the last seven years. Some commentators, especially those who run fan channels on YouTube, are now calling the English league a “farmers’ league” (or uncompetitive league) because of the way Guardiola has dominated it.
Arsenal on the Rise Again
I think it’s time for me to support another team in the EPL without being antagonistic towards City. I can’t hate or dismiss brilliant football. So I’ll still have a soft spot for City. But I enjoy football when it’s competitive or one team doesn’t dominate all the time. That’s why I hardly watch France’s Ligue 1, which Paris St Germain almost always wins, and the German Bundesliga (apart from this year when Bayer Leverkusen won the league and stopped Bayern Munich from winning 12 titles in a row).
Arsenal, the EPL runners up, really impressed me this year. I supported the club during the early Arsene Wenger years and his Invincibles team, which won a league title without losing a match in 38 games. No other team has ever done it in the premier league. Wenger’s Arsenal played attacking and stylish football and was a joy to watch. My son became a devoted fan as a kid when we both watched Arsenal on tv during weekends.
However, I checked out (but he remained an avid fan) many years ago when the owners and management turned the club into a nursery—nurturing players and selling them to other clubs. This led to their downfall as a great team. The culture of winning big titles disappeared dramatically from the club’s DNA. Wenger became obsessed largely with attaining a top-four position to please the owners, who were largely driven by the business or financial side of the game. That wasn’t good enough for me. It’s not surprising that Arsenal have not won the league for 20 good years.
Their current manager, Mikel Arteta, was Guardiola’s assistant coach for three and a half years at City. So, he’s imbibed Guardiola’s coaching methods and style of play. His team is almost a mirror-image of Man City. Arsenal almost won the title last year when they led the race for about 90 percent of the season, but bottled it in the last few matches, allowing City to win it with three games to spare.
Arsenal have been more resolute this season—taking the title race to the last day of the season. Indeed, between January and the end of the season, they lost only one match and drew one out of nineteen matches. That was spectacular. They won more matches than the Invinsibles, and with 89 points, they had only one point less than the 90 points that the Invincibles had in 2004.
Unfortunately for Arsenal, City are just too difficult to beat, especially if you give them an advantage at the business end of the season. They can go on an unbeaten run when they’re fighting for the title. Arsenal would have been champions if they had won their home game against Aston Villa. City moved ahead by two potential points when Villa beat Arsenal in that match. They won all their remaining nine matches to clinch the title.
I’ve seen enough to believe that Arteta has brought back a winning mentality to Arsenal. And since Arsenal plays the City-type of football that I admire, I want them to win the EPL next season in order to maintain the league’s competitiveness. Another City win runs the risk of turning the EPL into a farmers’ league. If Arsenal disappoints, I will surely back City again to win it. So, I’m back to my son’s team, with an eye on City.
