Is Pep Guardiola the only person who can end the Manchester City dominance?
“It’s over, there’s nothing left.”
If you want to know what it takes to be Pep Guardiola, to create a merciless winning machine over so many years, then listen to the existentialist refrain buried in the middle of his maybe-I’ll-resign admission in the aftermath of Manchester City’s title win on Sunday.
He wasn’t even talking in the present tense; about an emptiness that might fester after a record-breaking fourth in a row that was received by critics with feelings ranging from boredom to ennui.
No, that was his thought after last year’s treble: the high-point of his time in Manchester.
“Last year, after Istanbul, I said ‘it’s over, there’s nothing left’. But I have a contract and I start to think ‘no-one has done four in a row, why don't we try?’ And now I feel it’s done, so what next? Now I don't know what exactly the motivation is because it's difficult to find it when everything is done.”
There’s another one: everything is done.
To strive for greatness and to hit the mark pretty much every time requires a relentless internal struggle; requires a single-mindedness and obsession that makes every dream dissolve into nothing as soon as it’s conquered.
If there isn’t a record to be broken, a new peak to climb, then what’s the point?
Honestly, it sounds exhausting.
Exhaustion is the Premier League’s greatest weapon against the dreaded monopoly. In the Guardiola era it might be the only weapon.
Guardiola has remained focused at the Etihad this long solely because he’s had something driving him on through the fatigue.
The only chance we have of anybody else winning the league is if tiredness – physical, mental, existential – finally catches up with him.
"I know that I cannot do the job again and again and again and again," Jurgen Klopp’s farewell video back in January came out of the blue but by the end it was easy to see where he was coming from.
He looks tired. Getting back up after every fight becomes too much after eight or nine years.
Surely even Guardiola is not immune to this.
But then again, chasing Guardiola is probably a lot more tiring than being Guardiola, which, incidentally, is another reason why Pep leaving is probably the only way Man City will be toppled.
You can see the effect in miniature in most of City’s Premier League games, when opponents sit back and wait to be beaten.
The psychological stranglehold they’ve built over years of domination has made even the idea of defeating City almost too exhausting to contemplate.
That might also have been true for Klopp’s Liverpool and, next season, for Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal, who were almost perfect through 2024 but still didn’t do enough.
It’s more than just the mental side, of course. Guardiola is a genius and the best footballer manager the game has ever seen.
There was already a decent argument for that watching his Barcelona team, but what he’s done in England far surpasses those years.
Not for winning four in a row per se, but for the way he did it: beating a 92-point Liverpool, twice wearing down Arsenal, and evolving his team’s tactical approach at a rate that nobody can keep up with.
He’s toying with us now. From inverted full-backs to centre-backs stepping into midfield to four centre-backs lined up in a row, the innovations are coming too fast for anyone to eulogise, dissect, or copy.
Take a look at Chelsea, for example. This month Mauricio Pochettino had started to dabble, hesitantly, in playing Marc Cucurella in a fashionable number six position, a trick Guardiola single-handedly invented – and abandoned about three tactical revolutions ago.
There will be Arsenal supporters optimistic enough to think they can get the extra two or three points next year, but the frightening reality is that 2023/24 was an off-season for Man City.
They weren’t as dominating, as fast, or as slick as in years gone by and they had Kevin de Bruyne out for half season.
But they still got 91 points.
In fact since Guardiola got things together in year two of the project, he has only once lost the title and it took Liverpool winning 26 of their first 27 Premier League games to break Man City.
That won’t ever happen again.
The only real hope, then, is of Guardiola failing to come up with a new motivational slogan to hang in the dressing room.
The secret to Guardiola’s success is, perhaps, being the most intensely competitive manager in history. As he runs out of worlds to conquer, it could also prove to be his only weakness.
Only someone like him could feel a goodbye in the midst of celebration.
“The reality is I am closer to leaving than staying,” he told Sky Sports on the pitch at full-time. "I will stay next season and during the season we will talk. But eight or nine years...the end."
😂 "Arteta is in his office going PLEASE LEAVE"
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) May 19, 2024
Pep Guardiola on his future at Manchester City 🔵 pic.twitter.com/rCmBH0hxlZ
He was interrupted at that point by the deft Micah Richards, who, using all his journalistic nous, decided to cut off his interviewee right when he was over-sharing to chant “Five more years!” and giggle inanely.
We’ll never know what Guardiola was about to say.
Something about an ending. It’s agonising, the not knowing, because despite everything he’s given to the division the thought of him leaving is all we’ve got to cling onto.
Guardiola has been a brilliant influence on the Premier League and its best ever manager. But enough now. He is too good, and in that sense he’s right: there is nothing left.
Everyone else has been beaten, permanently. We need it to end.
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