Guardiola to quit at the end of the season

[chris89]

.

don't think there's any manager i would swap for wenger

lol

best champions league finish manager that there is tbh

[quality]

Be interesting to see, if the next manager flops next season while Guardiola is on holiday, if people actually accept Guardiola is a good coach eventually.

[tippa]

lol

best champions league finish manager that there is tbh

Something a lot of managers are struggling do with huge funds.
Arsenal have basically become a selling team even stoke sunderland aston villa have spent more than us in the last decade.
If wenger started spending he'd be the best manager no doubt.

[M.O.G.]

Something a lot of managers are struggling do with huge funds.
Arsenal have basically become a selling team even stoke sunderland aston villa have spent more than us in the last decade.
If wenger started spending he'd be the best manager no doubt.

The Wenger and not spending line has been said for the past 5 years, he still hasnt changed.


Very good manager though.

[chris89]

great accountant

[quality]

great accountant

Barca would win the profit cup every year.

Tbh if Barca want an account, they should go for Redknapp - he can creatively manage finances.

[tippa]

The Wenger and not spending line has been said for the past 5 years, he still hasnt changed.

Very good manager though.

wenger was spending decent amounts in his early days but point is no other manager would've got us 4th with that type of spending.

[quality]

wenger was spending decent amounts in his early days but point is no other manager would've got us 4th with that type of spending.

It's impossible to say that. But yeah obviously he's doing a good job, but there's plenty of managers who punch above their weight with spending. When you consider the minuscule budgets of Swansea and Norwich, they're about as close to the CL places as they are the relegation places.

Arsenal spend a lot on wages, they can't really plead poverty.

[Zoffie]

Be interesting to see, if the next manager flops next season while Guardiola is on holiday, if people actually accept Guardiola is a good coach eventually.

Mourinho wanted the Barcelona job before he went to Inter.
They narrowed it down to Mourinho & Guardiola.

There was huge support from the catalans to bring in Mourinho because of his success at Chelsea, but the major reasons they decided to go with Guardiola is because Mourinho wasn't succinct w/ the Barcelona way, his ego & he didn't know about the Barcelona developed philosophy. Guardiola had all of this.

Guardiola had little coaching experience, but, the Barcelona philosophy is a well formed one that has been developed over years by others with huge experience.

Most of the players growing up there & staying there will fully understand the practices of Barcelona.

Cesc as an example left Barcelona early & a lot of hard work is still being put into him to re-calibrate him to think more Barca like.

They have great players & you can see how with Newcastle great players can do a lot for you, but, after the success of Guardiola, I cannot see them diverting from picking someone who doesn't practise the Barcelona code.

Guardiola's success at his next club I feel, like with Brendan Rodgers, like with AvB, will only work at a club that has an environment that will accept that style of football. Unless of course Guardiola plans to adapt & change his style.

Which I think is a big risk for a top club to be experiment to his brand new style.

After AvB I don't like managers, without depth. By that I mean managers who haven't spent years coaching youth players.

Guardiola hasn't had long in coaching at all, he hasn't the depth, he was able to rely on a brilliant philosophy at a club that accepted it (originated it) with the right players who were also exceptional.

They're linked with Bielsa, who plays good football, but, actually he has different practices to Barcelona he has developed his own philosophy, which you will find more with managers that have spent a significant amount of time coaching youth football. A move for Bielsa would be interesting.

What I would personally love to see & also maybe hate... is a shock Brendan Rodgers appointment.

I think he will manage them one day, he has learned & is fluent in Spanish as it is his aim, but, you miss so many lessons with acceleration & it'd be better for him to take his time with it

[iKlozzle]

Tony Pulis and his cap for the Barca job

( Click to show/hide )

[tippa]

It's impossible to say that. But yeah obviously he's doing a good job, but there's plenty of managers who punch above their weight with spending. When you consider the minuscule budgets of Swansea and Norwich, they're about as close to the CL places as they are the relegation places.

Arsenal spend a lot on wages, they can't really plead poverty.

but were talking about different sections of the league table
Quite a few teams have been promoted and finished mid table which is pretty good but for you to challenge for a top 4 the general rule has been that you need investment. That's why i rate alan pardew and moyes so highly even tho the later could only do it once.

[CatchACat]

On SSN now doing an interview

[Rambo]

brendan rodgers has one good season and now he should get the barcelona job? @Zoffie

fuck off lol

[quality]

but were talking about different sections of the league table
Quite a few teams have been promoted and finished mid table which is pretty good but for you to challenge for a top 4 the general rule has been that you need investment. That's why i rate alan pardew and moyes so highly even tho the later could only do it once.

Arsenal were pretty established as part of the big four when they "stopped" spending. They have a big stadium, big wage bill and quality players.

You certainly need investment to break the top four, and Wenger has done a good job in keeping Arsenal relatively stable, but who is to say whether no one else could have done that job?

@Zoffie from what I've read on Guardiola, he thinks a lot about football. I don't think its unimaginable that, if he were to eventually move to England or Italy, he would adapt his style.

[Zoffie]

brendan rodgers has one good season and now he should get the barcelona job? @Zoffie

fuck off lol

Charming.

Tell me this, what did Guardiola do before he got the Barcelona job. Didn't he have as you say "one good season"..
Pretty sure Guardiola had 1 year as a coach at Barca B before becoming a manager whereas Brendan Rodgers has been a coach for almost 20 years now.

You'd also do well to note that Rodgers had been headhunted by Chelsea for their academy & was asked to become Roberto Mancini's assistant manager just before he joined the Swans.

His pedigree doesn't boil down to just this season.

I'd love to see it, because I love to see British managers doing well abroad. Although as I said, there's no rush, the position seems destined to be his soon enough.

@Zoffie from what I've read on Guardiola, he thinks a lot about football. I don't think its unimaginable that, if he were to eventually move to England or Italy, he would adapt his style.

Guardiola has played in Italy before & is very worldly, he like different cultures & it's been known for a while he's been targeting a move to London.

A lot of managers think about football a lot, the problem is, if say he replaces Wenger at Arsenal & if he adapts what has worked for him before, what does that mean?

He is trying something new.

At Barcelona he had the comfort of applying training routines & philosophies that has been around for years, he didn't create it.

So if he tries something new, how does he know it'll work? He doesn't. If you hire Guardiola off of his Barcelona success, you'd expect him to lean on what worked for him at Barcelona.

So that's exactly what I am saying, Guardiola for me, has to rely on that Barcelona philosophy, it's not like he has extensive experience, he doesn't. Similar to with AvB it'll be a huge learning curve for him, there experiences as coaches are shallow. The Barcelona philosophy makes them worth their salt. Although, that style isn't accepted everywhere & it'll be interesting to see if Rodgers was at Spurs.. It'd be interesting to see how the crowd react to the team being more patient. They might not like it & getting the crowd behind what you are trying to achieve is important.


Brendan Rodgers has been a coach for 20 years & say Guardiola goes to Arsenal & Rodgers goes to Spurs, I believe that Rodgers would do better to create that Tiki-Taka style at Spurs, than Guardiola would be able to do at Arsenal, unless of course, Guardiola buys a host of Spanish players.

I think it's telling that, Guardiola often failed to integrate non-catalans into the side, which was why it was more important to bring back the likes of Pique, Cesc etc. Experience is key. I think Sir Alex Ferguson gives Manchester United such an edge with his experience & Mancini at City is another shallow manager, who has relied on money at Lazio, Inter & now at City.
To be fair to him, he leans on the Italian philosophy...

However I cannot see him doing a Jose Mourinho with a smaller club & beating all of the bigger clubs just with his managerial influence, like Rodgers is doing at Swansea.

[quality]

Barcelona pressures gradually ate away at Pep Guardiola's enjoyment

Xavi Hernández had no doubts yet even he was surprised. The day Barcelona announced that Pep Guardiola was going to be their new coach, back in the summer of 2008 after the team had just finished the season empty handed, 18 points behind Real Madrid at the top of La Liga, the midfielder was convinced that change would come. But even he could not have expected quite so much change and quite so quickly. Within 12 months, Barcelona had won a unique treble: the league, the Copa del Rey and the European Cup were theirs. More followed. Much more.

"When they signed him I said: 'Madre mía, we're going to be flying,'" Xavi has recalled. "I swear it. He's a perfectionist. If Pep decided to be a musician, he would be a good musician. If he wanted to be a psychologist, he would be a good psychologist. He is obsessive; he would keep going until he got it right. He demands so much from himself. And that pressure that he puts on himself, those demands are contagious – it spreads to everyone. He wants everything to be perfect. He is a pesado." Heavy. Hard-working. Intense.

That intensity has led Guardiola to become the most successful coach in Barcelona's history. He has reached four consecutive Champions League semi-finals and won 13 trophies. Two have evaded him in a week in which Barcelona were knocked out of the Champions League by Chelsea and beaten by Real Madrid in the clásico, leaving them seven points behind with four games to play and conceding the title. But there is still a Copa del Rey final to come at the end of the season. Win that and he would have won 14 of 18 competitions.

There have been three consecutive league titles and two European Cups in just four years. And before that there was a league title as coach of Barcelona B. "Success" barely does it justice. It was about more than just the success, too, it was about the style. Barcelona were different.

So is Guardiola. One of his collaborators describes him as "seductive". It is difficult to do justice to just what he represents for the club. There was a kind of collective holding of breath as the wait to find out his future went on, almost as if the whole of Catalonia was anxiously pacing up and down outside a hospital ward, chewing their nails, waiting for news, watching the hand on the clock stubbornly refuse to move. Few men have represented Barcelona like Guardiola. Perhaps none have, despite the status always afforded to Johan Cruyff – the counter-cultural revolutionary, the rebel and aesthete from whom Guardiola himself took inspiration.

When Barcelona reached the 1986 European Cup final, a 15-year-old ballboy raced on to the pitch and pleaded with Victor Muñoz, scorer of the decisive penalty against Gothenburg in the shootout, for his shirt. The ballboy was Guardiola. During one match against Madrid he ran up to the referee and told him he was playing with the emotions of an entire nation, and he was not talking about Spain. When Andrés Iniesta was a kid, there were two posters on his wall at La Masía: one was of Catherine Zeta Jones, the other was Pep Guardiola. Cesc Fábregas still treasures the signed Guardiola shirt he was given as a youth-team player at the club.

A Catalan and a product of Barcelona's youth system, the skinny kid plucked from obscurity by Cruyff, Guardiola became the captain of Barcelona's Dream Team – the model against which all other Barcelona teams are measured and which Guardiola's team superseded. There is the same commitment to a footballing identity. But it is done even better. The hours are longer, the detail more intense. In a recent speech at the Catalan parliament, where he was awarded the medal of honour, Guardiola described how he hides away in a dark room for hours watching videos before each game, studying and thinking until the eureka moment arrives. "If we all work hard," he said, "we're an unstoppable country."

It is not just the talent but the intensity and commitment that make Guardiola. It is the same intensity that has contributed to his departure and the same commitment that contributed to delaying it: the coach was concerned about the impact that his announcement could have. Ultimately, though, the impact upon him was greater. In the end, it was too great. His left-back Eric Abidal has had a liver transplant, his assistant Tito Vilanova has had a tumour removed, he has been hospitalised with back problems. The emotional cost has been as great as the physical one. Managing Barcelona has taken its toll.

There has been joy – the praise of some of his players and some of his opponents has gone well beyond the normal platitudes – but there has also been a kind of weariness about Guardiola, especially in the past couple of years. The smile when he notes that he is losing his hair disguises a serious message. Barcelona are a club where the pressure is intense; Guardiola has talked about their being a club of short cycles. He was caught on television calculating that three or four years was a maximum, intimating that his time was "coming to an end".

José Mourinho recently said that Pep Guardiola should be given a contract at Barcelona for "50 years". "I thought José loved me more than that!" Guardiola joked. The joke revealed much. The Barcelona job is one that wears a coach down anyway and Guardiola is a coach that dedicates effort and emotion to the role; the importance he gives it, the reverence he has for the club and for football – "The game needs him," Raúl said on Thursday – brings with it a huge fatigue factor.

Throw this Madrid, with this manager, this media, this milieu, into the mix and the impact is even greater. Not only have there been internal problems at Barça, not only are Madrid a brilliant team that can push Barcelona all the way to the finish line, keeping the competitive tense up every single week, pushing them to breaking point, but the atmosphere has also changed. The agenda has shifted and the atmosphere has become suffocating. Guardiola and Raúl are friends; Guardiola and Mourinho once were. No more. The disappointment and hurt, the irritation, is palpable. The sadness, the sense of bitterness. That may sound melodramatic, somewhat overemotional, but from Guardiola's point of view it is true.

Even the things he did well could be held against him; there were many who threw the compliments back in his face. "Maybe it's true," he said, "maybe I do piss perfume." He may be wrong, he may be sensitive, he is no angel and he is not entirely blameless, but the Barcelona boss has found much of what relentlessly swirls around these clubs incomprehensible and unjust. The accusations and suspicions, the constant tension, the interests, have taken their toll. He was all too aware of the use that could be made of his every word and at times felt powerless to defend himself. The involvement was always huge; now it is just too much. He has found himself pulled into territory in which he is uncomfortable. This is not what he wanted, nor what he proposed. But it is what there is and it is inescapable. When Mourinho insisted that he and Guardiola were the same, the Barcelona coach said: "I will have to revise my behaviour then."

Put in simple terms: Pep Guardiola has not often enjoyed the past two years. In the build up to the final one of four clásicos played towards the end of last season, he said: "These have been 18 difficult days." His face revealed just how difficult. A few days before, he had snapped against Mourinho with his now famous rant about how the Portuguese coach was the "puto amo" [the fucking master] in the Bernabéu press conference room. That was planned, controlled. But he has not been able to control his environment as he would like; and being in control is something that has always concerned him. He has turned increasingly to sarcasm. At times it has carried a bitter sting.

There was something a little sad about the scene last week. Asked about the meetings between Real Madrid and Barcelona, Guardiola seemed to have forgotten about some of the moments that defined his spell on the Barcelona bench, about the 6-2 and the 5-0, about reaching the Champions League final and claiming the Spanish Super Cup, about some of Leo Messi's most marvellous moments and his own tactical innovations, such as winning at the Bernabéu with three at the back. Instead, he said: "I don't have good memories of them." And when that happens it is time to walk away.

Good read, have bolded some interesting bits.

@Zoffie Messi isn't Catalan, Iniesta isn't Catalan, Abidal isn't Catalan, Eto'o isn't Catalan, Villa isn't Catalan, Keita isn't Catalan, Henry isn't Catalan, Alves isn't Catalan... All these players played their part during Guardiola's reign.

Even Ibra scored the winner in the Clasico.

[Zoffie]

I think Iniesta had been at the club since he was 8 & Messi 13, so, when I talk about Catalan, it's my mistake, what I mean is someone who is taught in the Barcelona way.

Now, I'm not saying that foreign players have not aided Barcelona under Guardiola, I am saying they didn't fit into what he wanted to build. He has said him very self & it's not just with foreign players, it's also with the likes of Fabregas who became more EPL oriented.

That it is so difficult because the pattern of play they try to achieve they teach to their youngsters from an early age & it's difficult for even quality players to come into Barcelona & get on the same wave length.

Even with Cesc, there's been huge attempts of a re-calibration & his frustrations with Cesc's more difficult transition than he expected into the Barcelona way has been documented.

So it's not, really about players not doing well at Barcelona, Yaya Toure did well at Barcelona, but, he had no chance against Busquets who was completley in tune w/ the Barca techniques.

[Romelu Lukaku]

Tito Vilanova has been given the job as of next season.

[Zoffie]

Tito Vilanova has been given the job as of next season.

Is this the Espanyol guy?

Edit. No, it's not him. It's Guardiola's asst. They were always going to appoint someone who knew the Barca code in & out.

Guardiola had their respect as he was a former star, Barcelona players are supposed to be humble, they're not. He'll handle the pitch side fine, but, we'll see how he copes with the psychological aspects of management.

[CatchACat]

Is this the Espanyol guy?

Nah, Guardiolas current assistant