![]() At Barcelona’s legendary 6-2 win against Real Madrid, the so-called false Nine was exactly the kind of tinkering that would have received backlash a few years later in games lost or drawn. The main reason being a lack of attention on details and lack of quality in the discourse at the start of the Guardiola era. ![]() Although Guardiola status as untouchable in the media changed from year one to year four at Barcelona, he did change less than it was written about him. This, allegedly, reflected itself in the locker room and with the board. His personal improvement led to more and more details, but those also looked like limiters to an unlimited team that was based on the core of Messi, Iniesta, Xavi and Busquets. Experiments with a back three led to higher peak games which were less sustained than perhaps the 2010-11 version of Guardiola’s Barcelona. Yet, his focus on constant improvement seemed to change his team from invincible to beatable, at times. In his last season at Barcelona, the quality of his team and himself, admittedly, looked superior to anyone in Europe. At times, Guardiola received criticism for being either too eager to increase this gap again or his competitors seemed to value other, obviously important aspects more or more accurately than him – i.e. Whilst Guardiola has stayed on the forefront at the evolution of his revolution, his advantage over fellow managers seemingly decreased step by step in the meantime. Building up from the back with passes on the ground and involvement of the goalkeeper even under pressure, overload in the center while maintaining high width and depth, or even their extreme pressure with an extraordinarily high line to enable early regain of possession have conquered football back then (with two Champions League titles in four heavily favored campaigns) and since taken over the ideas of others teams more and more – some of them, Guardiola had started already in his first year as head coach back at Barcelona B. The public discourse about his Barcelona team mainly revolved about the positional style of play and – even contrasted with Aragones’ successful EURO campaign with the Spanish national team – was highly focused on his idea of playing football and how it differed from most teams. Funnily enough, he is polarizing exactly because of this mutual agreement of critics and fans. While polarizing, everyone seems at least to agree that he is an unique innovator. Guardiola’s image in the football world is complex to describe. Von guest am in den Kategorien Premier League, Team Portraits mit 5 Kommentaren How Guardiola & 3-2-2-3 (ultimately) solved the defending meta
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