Pep Guardiola’s free-flowing team are starting to run away with the Premier League and are doing it in a way that cannot help but soak up new admirersThe devil always gets the best tunes. Watching Paris Saint-Germain overwhelm Celtic in the Champions League on Wednesday the most striking thing about PSG was not the sense of powerful gears still in reserve, or even the basic beauty of their attacking play, the way the ball skittered about between Neymar and promising loanee-trialist Kylian Mbappé like a bead of water in a pan of hot fat. The most remarkable thing was how difficult it was, suddenly, to properly dislike them.Difficult but not impossible. It is important to emphasise this. PSG’s on-field brilliance...
Pep Guardiola’s side are threatening points and goals records and, though other fast starters have faded, nothing suggests they will do likewise in the title raceManchester City’s start to the season has been remarkable, largely because they are challenging records for two different types of dominance. Only Tottenham in 1960-61 have a better record at this stage, winning 11 out of 11, while only seven other sides have won 10 and drawn one of their first 11 games, all in the past 40 years which perhaps suggests how money has created bigger divides between teams.And only six sides have ever scored more than City’s 38 goals after 11 games, four of them in the 19th century. What seems really telling,...
Brighton, Huddersfield and Newcastle are surpassing expectations and are showing clubs such as Everton and West Ham how it should be doneWhen Pep Guardiola suggested an English team could win the Champions League the other day he was asked if he did not consider the intensity of the Premier League a potential problem. Intensity being the word normally used to promote the idea that the English league is somehow tougher and more demanding than other leagues around Europe, with more competitive fixtures each weekend and a festive programme that usually sets out to be as gruelling as possible when other countries’ footballers are quite sensibly having a rest.“No,” Guardiola said. “I don’t believe in that. I think the best team...
In Spain the Portuguese’s Real Madrid twice outscored his rival’s Barcelona but the Manchester United manager’s big-match caution comes at a price while City are dazzlingIt can feel like a trick of the imagination sometimes to remember there was once a time when José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola were comrades. Not friends, perhaps, but certainly allies and close enough that Guardiola saved his future bete noire from a tight spot back in the days before Mourinho, as Real Madrid manager, started referring to Barcelona only as ellos (them).It’s a great story given what we know now. Barcelona were playing Athletic Bilbao at San Mamés and at full-time Luis Fernández, the home team’s manager, appeared ready to throttle the newly appointed...
The City manager says he is in the job to win not to entertain but, as Napoli demonstrated, a stubborn refusal to go direct could offer opponents hopeImmediately after Saturday’s strikingly beautiful demolition of Stoke City, which came if you remember a couple of hours after Manchester United’s exercise in cautious negativity at Anfield, Pep Guardiola was asked whether he would always insist on his Manchester City team being committed to entertaining football.No, came the somewhat surprising answer. “I am not here for entertainment. I am here to win.” Related: Kevin De Bruyne in no rush to sign new contract with Manchester City Related: Manchester City rely on early goals to overcome Napoli in Champions League Continue reading...