The secret to City’s success? Start every new season undercooked
It’s no walk in the park but Pep happy to risk early losses knowing his rested stars will come good in the new year
Nice view out of the Mandarin Oriental in New York. At £780 a night, you’d hope so. Plenty of greenery about, the suites looking out over to Umpire Rock at the south end of central Park.
Pep Guardiola hadn’t been in his room long before a wander along the paths he walked while on a sabbatical in America all those years ago seemed appealing. Manchester city’s squad were soon summoned for a team walk.
Guardiola took them up to Sheep Meadow, a 15-acre expanse just before you reach the park’s lake and its boathouse. A little crowd had gathered, the sun was beating down and with the manager — you suspect — not fancying an hour’s drive up to Orangeburg to their training base, an impromptu mosey turned into a training session.
A light session: some stretches, a bit of a run. Jack Grealish jokingly complained at the state of the patchy surface. A few balls were knocking around and they messed about keeping those airborne for a while.
city had just lost their opening pre-season friendly over in North carolina to celtic, with a fortnight to go until Saturday’s curtain-raiser community Shield, and central Park was deemed a fun and different way of doing the boring recovery stuff, something Guardiola has always been adept at gauging.
With 13 first-team regulars still on their post-euros breaks, they were nowhere close to ready. Guardiola knew that and, in a perverse sort of way, embraces this lack of fitness every year.
He’s the manager who offers the longest breaks over the summer and it was striking that in the community Shield, erik ten Hag started Kobbie Mainoo — and would’ve picked Luke Shaw but for fitness issues — while city’s england contingent, plus Rodri, weren’t even back through the training-ground doors, let alone playing. These are wildly opposing theories to conditioning and the lengthy breaks are something city’s boss swears by. Guardiola has told his stars to return when they want and feel able to do so. Within reason.
it is a key differential for city and arguably the main aspect of the blueprint that has led them to four Premier League titles on the spin. They can weather a few dodgy results earlier in the season, which usually come a few weeks in, once the adrenaline of players bursting back into club football wears off.
Year on year they crank it up around christmas, after being written off in the autumn, and year on year they hunt down whoever might have set the pace.
The players swear blind that there is no magic formula to this, that the long winning stretches around the turn of the year are coincidental. Mateo Kovacic let the idea ruminate before telling
Mail Sport in America it was probably down to Guardiola’s rotation over anything else. ‘The guys come fresh into the last three or four months into the season,’ he said.
But it’s hard to look past a manager who makes sure summers are not cut short as the reason why the endorphins kick in as the line approaches.
‘Pep was very generous to us,’ said Bernardo Silva, who headed in city’s late equaliser against Manchester United to force penalties at Wembley. ‘He understands that we’ve been playing with the crazy schedule that we have because of FiFA, UeFA, the Premier League and all the cups that we have.
‘it’s 70, 80 games a season sometimes, which is not easy. So it was very generous and now our job is to be serious, to prepare well and to come back as fit as possible to another long season knowing that our rivals came back a bit earlier and maybe their physical condition is a bit better than ours.
‘Hopefully we’re all fine and play top at chelsea next week. But that’s no excuse. We’ve had that in the past. We came late last season as well.’
Three city players — Ruben Dias, Manuel Akanji and Jeremy Doku — started against United having gone through only a few training sessions. Five came off the bench, including Silva, with the same training minutes behind them. Guardiola sacrifices the short term for the long term and that is not an easy thing to do in this age. it’s no walk in the park.
AFTeR the serene kickabout in central Park, city lost again at Yankee Stadium — this time to Ac Milan — before heading off to Orlando, where they drew against Barcelona on a tour in which the youngsters thrived.
Oscar Bobb, possibly man of the match against United on Saturday, looks ready to make that right wing spot his own and Nico O’Reilly, who fought hard on his senior debut in holding his own against casemiro and Mainoo, was the surprise package Stateside.
When city went to Orlando they stayed in the Disney-themed Four Seasons and there came a warning to remain watchful of alligators skulking about, particularly if going out for a run around the sprawling 26-acre complex. england is not Florida when it comes to gators, but city are aware there will be a few snapping at their heels to snatch that Premier League crown, which leaves its permanent residence in Manchester to be paraded around china next week.
‘We don’t like to lose and we’re going to be ready for the season, knowing that it will be tough,’ Silva added. ‘You cannot win for ever. One day we will lose. Hopefully not this season, but one day. it will happen to us.’
Guardiola therefore has to find ways of subtly changing the messaging every year. When Arsene Wenger was invited to city’s training ground recently, the pair had lunch together with chief executive Ferran Soriano, sporting director Txiki Begiristain and the backroom staff.
Guardiola asked the chef at his catalan restaurant in town, Tast, to cook and generally made a fuss of the Arsenal legend. conversation quickly gravitated towards management and Guardiola’s thoughts on how to squeeze the maximum from the elite. ‘if you have energy, they have energy,’ he explained.
That comes in various guises. it might be how he believes simply going for another title cannot be a motivation tool after such consistent success, so focus on improving as an individual is needed instead. Or berating his midfield when, 2-0 up against chelsea in Ohio, they started slowing the game down. Moaning so much that his assistant, Juanma Lillo, failed to stifle his laughter.
Or even basic games formulated in training, like the reaction test he’s tried when players have to clap as a ball is bounced or stay still when he feigns to throw it. choose wrong and you’re eliminated. They go on and on until somebody wins. it prompts giggles.
They are not reasons for success but Guardiola is good at offering up something new or something surprising which makes players think or second guess. And the
hard work now starts, with the weeks before the Champions League starts on September 17 earmarked to hammer the fundamentals home at the City Football Academy.
This is the only time all season — a season which could finish in mid-July if they reach the latter stages of the Club World Cup next summer — that Guardiola will enjoy free midweeks to coach. When Dias posted a colour-coded spreadsheet of the schedule last week, effectively showing a jumbled rainbow, the enormity of what lays in store for the European teams crystalised.
It is why the last month and the next are so crucial for Guardiola, because this is what he does and this is what serves City so well.
Give them rest. Then nail down the new patterns of play, a tinker on the style, in training before everything starts piling up. It’s not definitive as to why City have four in a row yet provides a foundation to their unrivalled domestic dominance.