Pep Guardiola, and the art of overthinking

There are lots of managers who favor exciting, attacking soccer. There are even lots of managers who favor pass-first, possession-oriented, exciting, attacking soccer. But none of them are held in the same, mystical reverence as Pep Guardiola.

Then again, none of them took over at Barcelona without any top flight managerial experience, turned them into arguably the greatest club team in history, (maybe, sort of) invented tiki-taka and won approximately 1000 trophies in four seasons. At Bayern Munich, Guardiola’s various experiments (three formations in a single half? Gasp! David Alaba in central midfield? Also gasp! Thomas Muller ist ein Raumdeuter? Nach Luft schnappen!) only enhanced his reputation as a revolutionary tactical mind.

And so when Guardiola was hired by Manchester City, he wasn’t hired simply to win things. He was hired to win them a specific way, a way that’s hard to pin down with any specificity, such is the nature of Guardiola’s management style, but that everyone seems generally to accept will involve, if it ever happens, lots of passing and movement and goals and not so much defending. What no one, I’m guessing, thinks it will involve is Jesus Navas playing right-back, which is where he played during City’s match against Arsenal on Sunday.

Navas was, predictably, a horrible right-back. He played the position as if his only understanding of its intricacies were gleaned from a low-quality VHS tape of Paul Scholes’ defensive lowlights. But that’s not really the point. Strange personnel decisions happen; deciphering Guardiola’s team sheet, however, has become almost a weekly ritual. Goodness only knows how he’ll set up his side against Antonio Conte’s Chelsea on Wednesday. Three at the back? Fernandinho in defense? An all-winger central midfield? Yaya Toure holding?

This is all, of course, part of the fun, but there also seems to be a growing suspicion Guardiola might be overcomplicating things. Though I think “overcomplicating” is a misleading word.

Guardiola’s trying things in a way that has driven a wedge between an understanding of tactics as a means to winning soccer games and an understanding of tactics as more of an ongoing experiment, the purpose of which is simply to push the limit on the number of things it’s possible to do with a finite number of players in a finite space in a finite amount of time as far as it will go. In other words, he’s trying things not because they might help him win, but because he finds them interesting. In still more other words: he’s not doing this for you, he’s doing it for him.

This is a difficult interpretation of Guardiola to defend, not least because his job is to win things. And its convincingness probably depends mostly on whether you’re the sort of person who looks at Guardiola’s frantic, touchline gesticulations as evidence he knows something we don’t, or simply as evidence he rubs his head a lot.

The other problem is soccer’s a very simple game, and therefore very easy to simplify. You can push up or you can drop off or you can try to keep possession or you can kick the ball as far away from your own goal as possible at every opportunity. And so at least one big problem with Guardiola’s innovation, innovative though it undoubtedly is, is that it’s easily reduced to a kind of stoner-epiphany: “Dude, what if … what if there were like … like … no positions, man?!” NACH LUFT SCHNAPPEN!

In short, it’s not very hard to portray Guardiola as a self-important ass. On the one hand, soccer for him is art (and if good art is going to be made, risks will have to be taken). On the other hand, Charlie Adam is a professional soccer player. On the same hand: Jesus Navas at right-back.

Where you fall on the Guardiola-analysis spectrum likely depends on how you interpret his results, both this season and over the course of his career. But of course at least one of the central tenets of Guardiolism is that results are only one (possibly very small) slice of the pie. Which places Guardiola defenders, including Guardiola, in the strange position of having to defend their belief in the inherent value of the beauty of the game by pointing to its ability to earn results.

All of which is to say Guardiola’s problem is a PR problem. He knows what he wants to do, and he’s doing it. The trick is making it absolutely crystal clear to the rest of us how little he cares about what we have to say. Good for him, frankly. Most of us are idiots.

But on Wednesday he’ll go head-to-head with Conte, whose first season in the Premier League has gone astonishingly well, and who also spends every second of every minute of every one of his team’s matches screaming and waving his arms and wearing a suit, but whose instructions to his players appear to be very simple. The center-backs defend, the wing-backs get up and down, the midfielders go box-to-box and the attackers attack.

If Conte beats Guardiola, as he did, comfortably, the last time the two went head-to-head, the story will almost certainly be, again, that Guardiola’s mad scientist act isn’t working. But remember: he’s not doing this for you. He’s doing it for him.

Weekly Awards

The David Beckham Award for Penalties: Harry Arter

Bournemouth were pretty good against Southampton on Saturday, and probably would’ve deserved the win if Harry Arter converted a 79th-minute penalty. Instead he kicked it very, very far over the bar. He slipped during his run up, which probably had something, if not everything, to do with the miss, but even so: yeesh.

The Roberto Martinez Award for Post-match Positivity: Ronald Koeman

Ronald Koeman told the media he was “proud” of his players after they were beaten 3-1 by Liverpool at Anfield, which as far as fan-relation moves go isn’t the strongest for an Everton manager. Koeman won plaudits earlier this season for, essentially, criticizing players, something Roberto Martinez may literally have never done, so perhaps Koeman’s backsliding. Then again, he spent most of his press conference complaining about Liverpool’s bench trying to get Ross Barkley sent off for a very red-card-looking tackle on Dejan Lovren.

The Chris Kamara Award for Fighting Like Beavers III: Crystal Palace

When Cesc Fabregas gave Chelsea the lead against Crystal Palace after only five minutes on Saturday, it seemed that would be the end of that. But no. Two quick goals from Wilfred Zaha and Christian Benteke gave the Eagles a lead in the 11th minute they would spend the next 80 desperately defending. Mamadou Sakho might be in the middle of the greatest loan move of all time, Wayne Hennesey didn’t do anything even remotely stupid and the rest of the team combined for something in the region of 500 blocks. And they won, shockingly enough, and now there’s even hushed talk of a real life, honest to goodness title race. I don’t know about that, but this was a sneaky contender for match of the season.

The Alan Shearer Award for Kicking The Ball Harder Than You Have To: Leicester

I guess sacking Claudio Ranieri was the right decision. Crikey.

The Stephen Warnock Award for Forgetability: Swansea vs. Middlesbrough

Poor old Middlesbrough. They’ve got nothing. Well, they’ve got Adama Traore, who is definitely something, but other than that very fast something, they’ve got nothing. I’m more convinced Middlesbrough are getting relegated than I am Sunderland are getting relegated, and I am very, very convinced Sunderland are getting relegated. And Swansea! Poor, Fernando Llorente-less Swansea, settling for a point against Middlesbrough, about whom the only remaining interesting question this season is whether they’ll score another goal. I don’t know, but I also don’t care, which is a good place to be re: Middlesbrough Football Club, all things considered, I think.