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Episode 106: Wildcard Wednesday - How Pep Guardiola killed football!
68 Plays2 days ago
Southampton – Greg has been bottling this one up for a long time. We take a dive through how an obsession with philosophy and style of play is ruining football, and whether we think the course can right itself.
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Transcript
Introduction and Teaser
00:00:09
Global Sports Podcast Network
Hello and welcome back to the Daily Southampton, part of the Global Sports Podcast Network. My name is Gregory Elliott, and as always, I'm joined by my wonderful co-host, Zach Ingo Finch. How you doing, Zach?
00:00:21
Zak
Yeah, good mate. I'm excited for today. I've been looking forward to this.
00:00:23
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah.
00:00:24
Zak
Looking forward to a good Greg rant for ages.
00:00:26
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah, it is Wild Card.
00:00:27
Zak
Considering it's usually me.
00:00:29
Global Sports Podcast Network
It's Wild Card Wednesday, and what I have done is prepare a lengthy piece, let's say, which I have rather crudely titled, How Pep Guardiola Ruined Football.
00:00:43
Global Sports Podcast Network
but
00:00:46
Global Sports Podcast Network
a
00:00:46
Zak
Amazing.
00:00:47
Global Sports Podcast Network
but But it's not quite as deep as that, that just makes a better headline. So yeah, I guess I'm just gonna try and get straight into it and try and remember at some point to come up for air, I guess.
Critique of Guardiola's Style
00:01:01
Global Sports Podcast Network
So right, Pep Guardiola, we've heard about before on the podcast in Room 101, my feelings about the style and philosophy of football that he's bought to the game. But I thought I would go into further detail as to why that is. And and real cutoff point is that it's just boring. It's all the same. It's low risk football where they want to wear the opponent down and dominate the game and pass it back and forth between themselves and eventually find a gap. But then
00:01:33
Global Sports Podcast Network
pass it back and there's a wonderful video of Man City before they signed Earling Harland where they spent about 35 passes around the box when there were about 15 chances to shoot and they it's disappointing and it's really just not great to watch I've never really enjoyed watching it but it's it's definitely aided by their aura of dominance up until this season in fact where it's started to fall apart because I think it's Partially been figured out that they they don't really always have the players It's just the aura of what they bring that comes with it and it's been broken down and then Once the players lose that confidence to bring that or that's sort of half the reason it falls apart But as other teams have found out and all of the other teams that have tried to follow this same mold Burnley last season us under Russell Martin this season
00:02:31
Global Sports Podcast Network
Amorim who's just come into United is is coming up against similar flaws even Jiric in the system that he's played he sort of he very clearly has a system and is trying to stick to it and it's definitely not working currently but the problem is that it breeds a lot of the creativity out of football if you're trained to take, put yourself in a low risk position and find the simple pass sideways or backwards until the obvious low risk pass becomes the play. You take all of the beauty out of the game. It just means that you're never going to get the wondrous goals that we love and football. It's why there's such a nostalgia for the Barclays era and the sort of gritty play and goals that come from that.
Impact on Youth Training
00:03:24
Global Sports Podcast Network
And the real problem is not so much the implementation of this system in an individual team, but how much it's become the norm. And so you see it all the way down to grassroots layers and you see the standard practice for training kids. I've got a ah ah young son who is playing football. So I see it maybe a bit more,
00:03:48
Global Sports Podcast Network
than some but that you know they they're trained in the same way you pass the ball and you always find the pass and play the low risk and pass ball about and what you're doing by trying to train that in some so young is you're removing the ability to breed the next Messi or even Ronaldo who brings the different like level to the game of skill and beauty and that's that's the realist shame of all of it how are you How are you going to develop the ability to bring that to the game, which is what we all want to see. Like who doesn't love watching compilations of people doing ridiculous dribbles and taking on people and just instead of stopping and looking at it and going, well, there's two players here. I can't take them on. I should turn around and pass it to the simple player. It's, it ruins a lot of what I love about the game.
00:04:47
Global Sports Podcast Network
uh which i think brings me to my first logical pause for breath uh because i'm gonna pivot on to what i think the real art form of being a manager should be and why it's really sad that it's gone away but i guess uh it's the first point to pause for breath how you feeling zac you hanging on in there
00:05:11
Zak
enjoy You You feel like you've been holding this in a while.
Corporatization of Football
00:05:15
Global Sports Podcast Network
i have it some ah It's sad to see so many of the part of the game of love go the way and you know we talk a lot about it being like the corporatisation but and perhaps that that's this that's to blame for it right because that's what you look for in an investment is a low risk chance and so that's I guess what's bred this love of bringing the philosophy to football but you see it all over the place
00:05:41
Zak
Well, you've seen it twice with us. You've seen it twice. You've seen Russell Martin go and the players not know how to play. And you also saw it with the whole Ralph Fastenhutel in the Southampton way, right? With the Southampton playbook that they wanted to make everyone play the same way bred entirely through all of the different levels of football so that they can eventually come up to the main squad and be able to play this specific way.
00:06:04
Zak
but that requires there to be almost a dynasty. right I think that things like this work for Pep Guardiola and have done for so long, because you know if he wants to say a club for five, six years, he usually can. And I think that that you know gives him a level of freedom to be able to develop these philosophies. Whereas you're right, when you're just trying to run it through every level of football, you know if you've got a team that has to switch manager halfway through a season and the players have basically been drilled into playing one way, you saw it in our last game against Brentford. The amount of passbacks was insane and they they they fell into doing what they've done all season because that's how they've wanted to play and we were excited because we had an identity and the identity is that we want to play a really really specific way but the problem is is that then if you have to deviate from that to win the games which is what we needed to start doing, they were unable to
00:06:57
Zak
And now, they need to deviate it away from it entirely. But again, you're also now getting the whole exactly what started to happen with Nathan Jones as well. right like that was He came in, tried to stamp his his style of play on a team that didn't know how to play his way. And then he kind of got bullied off the field by by the sounds of it, the players, by just not doing what he asked them to do. And then he came out of a bunch of weird sound bites. And then we had sellers that kind of let them do what they did, which resulted in us what getting a win.
00:07:27
Zak
And then we obviously had a manager come in and stamp an identity, but it's when they go, it's the catastrophic fallout of it and why ah ah I'm kind of in agreement with you. They're trying to train players and make systems this specific way that are not easy to change and easy to adapt because they're so rigid results in a lot of problems like we've got a bunch of goalkeepers now that that you know you know ramsdale was brought in realistically to do a specific thing and now the way we've changed has played that means he's pointless you've got players one of the problems we were talking about with transfers is you transfer a player in like flin downs to fulfill
System Inflexibility Issues
00:08:02
Zak
a specific role in a specific part of a philosophy
00:08:06
Zak
instead of just having a central midfielder. And then what you end up with is that if the system changes, those players sometimes get lost because they only can play this one specific way and this one specific area. And like, don't be wrong. I understand there's like positions and stuff, but like you usually have a bit more flexibility, but it's removing not only the creativity out of football, but I think the flexibility to play a different way. And then we're seeing that with teams that struggle.
00:08:32
Zak
and we'll get rid of their management team and bring bring a new manager in. And you might have a new manager bounce because everyone's happy again. But then, you know, you look at Elesta, which two games who are like new manager bounce proper, and now they've immediately fallen back to not doing that. I can't remember who it was that we were talking to, wolve the wolves Wolves podcast. They have basically tried to play like Nuno was in charge since Nuno left.
00:08:54
Zak
and That's one of the problems that every manager that's replaced them has taken because they they have started Signing up to a specific footballing philosophy rather than ultimately trying to just find a way to score goals and win
00:09:03
Global Sports Podcast Network
playing football.
Zencastr Advertisement
00:09:04
Global Sports Podcast Network
yeah And I'm going to pivot and going to pivot fully onto that and more after a message from our partners at Zenkaster. So here at the Global Sports Podcast Network, we spent a lot of time selecting our delivery platform and Zenkaster came out the clear winner. With 4K video recording from your phone and AI editing that automatically removes all those ums and ahs, it's super easy to start a podcast that sounds great and is delivered efficiently.
00:09:05
Zak
So yeah, I'm with you is where
00:09:31
Global Sports Podcast Network
If you're ready to tell your story, check out the link in the show description and learn more about Zenkaster. Okay, so you're you're definitely picking up on what I'm putting down because you've accurately predicted where I'm pivoting this to next because with the systems that you're playing, you lack the versatility to to bring it in. And it means that you're signing players for a system instead of just signing good players.
00:10:01
Global Sports Podcast Network
And that is a problem.
Loss of Managerial Creativity
00:10:02
Global Sports Podcast Network
And it's the, the death of what I enjoyed most about watching football, which is the art form of a manager that will study a team and make a system specifically to beat that team. And it changes slot, you know, it still got the same. Oh, I mean, back in the day, you're still four, four two, but you're changing the system to effectively play. We talked about it earlier in the season about.
00:10:30
Global Sports Podcast Network
it was brilliant of mine to double up on Saka that's exactly the sort of versatility you were looking for until it turns out it was an accident because someone else was sick but looking for the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents and trying to mute the strengths and identify the weaknesses and it seems to be a really dying art because The aim of all of the philosophies is to completely dominate every facet of the game. And if you're not doing that, it's not good enough. You look at extreme versions like, uh, post-Koglu at Spurs, where his entire system is to press stupidly high. Uh, and you know, there are blessings and curses to that, but at least it's something a bit different. And again, Dyche.
00:11:21
Global Sports Podcast Network
uh has a system of hard to beat system supposedly but it's also struggling to come through and it's all of these managers with the philosophies that are are struggling and it's removes the need for individual brilliance in a team and that's a shame because you know you're just creating robots instead of players with flair and talent It's a bit sad.
Wealth vs. Strategy in Modern Football
00:11:51
Global Sports Podcast Network
and yeah, it's, it's no longer the elegant chess match of, that used to be where you could have a, a Neil Warnock take on an Alex Ferguson and, or, you know, uh, Stoke making it specifically hard to play at their ground with their,
00:12:13
Global Sports Podcast Network
weird long throws and the strange wind and the slightly longer grass and it's it's now just becoming a sheer brute force of who has the better players to absolutely dominate the game in exactly the same positions in exactly the same systems it just means that the highest paid are going to win and that's that's it and it's
00:12:34
Zak
Yeah, it's not taking a chess match to beat us this season. it's it's It's been our players making errors at the back because we play out from the back. but Everyone knows we play out from the back and after a game or so into the season, all of a sudden you know all you need to do is run at us when we're in near defence, we'll accidentally mess it up, kick the ball out and now we've got we've beaten the record for the most individual errors.
00:12:56
Zak
it's it's wild to me that you know and it's like live by the door sword die by the sword we've died by the sword but then also the flip side of that is you know vinson company manager of burnley gets some relegated goes to buy in munich make it make sense and you know everyone jokes about it and laughs about it but like it happened that that is a thing that genuinely happened and you know they don't i don't know whether better than last year but you're not hearing half of the horror stories from buy munich last year maybe because leva kuzan aren't doing as well but like
00:13:25
Zak
Yes, i kind of I fully agree with you. It isn't as exciting. you know we We try to, in our podcasts and our cross ah crossovers, crossovers, kind of guess what the results will be and and have some fun with it.
00:13:38
Zak
But it's difficult because a lot of the time you can pretty much go, well, this club is playing this club. Because of the way they play and the way we that we play, we're probably going to get exposed and they're going to beat us by a ridiculous amount of goals.
00:13:49
Zak
And like that's usually what's happened. And it's so easy to predict.
00:13:51
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah, we're going to play exactly the same way we've played the last 10 games. They're going to play exactly the way they've played the last 10 games. There's no more mystery or individual brilliance.
00:14:02
Zak
But then it's also funny, because the one time we tried to play four at the back in recent times instead of five at the back, or we played four at the back instead of three, which was that Spurs game, because it started not working out and they went 4-0 down immediately, Russell Martin threw the book away, took off Sulibana about what, 10 minutes into the first game he'd had in a year.
00:14:24
Zak
And then we lost anyway, just with only scored an extra they only scored an extra one goal. Yeah, you're you're right. It can be very predictable now.
00:14:34
Zak
And the thing is is that I understand why if you've got a Guardiola who has almost an infinite transfer budget, although we might be finding out in the future whether or not it was so infinite or not, seeing how he struggled with a couple of his key players out injured, it'd be amazing to shove him in a team like ours and see what he can do.
00:14:51
Global Sports Podcast Network
yeah and and and the fact that they struggled this much this season really drills home my point and the point that you were getting out from it is that once you shoehorn these players who have individual brilliance into this system they become robotic and struggle without certain key parts you look at players we talked about it about players who it takes a year or so to settle in at City and become part of it like Jack Grealish like he's not the
00:14:53
Zak
you know
00:15:22
Global Sports Podcast Network
flair and spark of brilliance in a game he once was because he's at Man City he's now just a cog in that machine that goes to take on a player and then turns around and passes it backwards it's you know and you know Calvin Phillips is ah ah a bit of a running joke of someone who struggled since before and since going to City but at Leeds he was a ah ah good player who had that individual quality that made him a desired player and he went to city and it's absolutely ruined him and it's it's exactly the same you you get spit out by the system because you try and play football your own way and it's yeah it's
00:16:05
Zak
Isn't that basically the entirety of Manchester United's history since the end of Alex Ferguson, though, as well? Just every, all these new managers coming in, all their different philosophies, messing them all up. You've got an entire squad mismatched of various different managers, some of whom have managed to live it out, some of whom you haven't. Everyone talks about the jokes that you have, and ah you know, Chelsea, I think a lot of teams like this, and then they switch between all these managers that have these great ideas that are going to, we're going to do it this way, specifically this way,
00:16:34
Zak
And then you have a player that might come really, really good under like a Pochettino, then Pochettino goes and they just rubbish. ah even Even to an extent with us, like, you know, with the Jurek has highlighted Ugo Chukwu and been like, yeah, we're going to play Ugo Chukwu all the time.
00:16:39
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah.
00:16:45
Zak
That was actually really good. And he had a bit of a howler last game. But like that is off the back of Russell Martin not really seeing him give what Flynn Downs did in the specific style.
00:16:59
Zak
So then we just have a player that we've loaned in that's completely wasted because he has not fit that role. <unk>s Yeah, you're you're right. it's it It is killing the sort of, I guess, the individuals go to these big clubs and just get lost amongst the other names.
00:17:12
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah.
00:17:13
Zak
and It's wild. What I would like to potentially ask you, so it's a counter the point, I suppose, and we'll probably do it after we take a short break, but how do you see like,
00:17:24
Zak
How is it that Liverpool have been able to cope from basically swapping from clock to slot without pretty much any issue? Because nobody expected them to be where they are this season. Is it due to the bad of everybody else?
00:17:34
Zak
Is it because City are playing so awfully? Or why is it? Because like for me, is that philosophy based? Is it because they play similar ball? They play kind of different ball, but not... that When it works, it works though.
00:17:45
Global Sports Podcast Network
I've got thoughts on that and I will touch on them after a message from our partners at the Global Sports Podcast Network.
00:17:49
Zak
Perfect.
Praise for Liverpool's Adaptable Style
00:17:51
Zak
The Global Sports Podcast Network is changing the face of football podcasting with dedicated daily content for every Premier League team, women's football, fantasy football, and a daily Premier League wrap-up broadcasted in five different languages. This is your one-stop shop for your daily football fix. Find GSPM wherever you find your usual podcasts.
00:18:08
Global Sports Podcast Network
Okay, so to answer your question, I'm glad you asked it because it might be a little known fact but my wife is a Liverpool fan and so in this household they are reasonably closely followed so so I have some insight and the answer is because they don't have this nonsense philosophy they go out and play football and they will look at their opponents and identify certain weaknesses but more importantly they know that they
00:18:40
Global Sports Podcast Network
are a team that can defend and hold off against most attacks and then just break at pace. And if you break at pace and have people who can run fast and put the ball in the net, that's the name of the game.
00:18:52
Global Sports Podcast Network
I mean, how many times this year have I said, if you don't shoot at the goal, you can't win games. Like, yeah,
00:19:00
Zak
And then you get out of practice, like a lot of our squad where they can't they can shoot in training and they can score in training, but then you put them in the real match situation and they...
00:19:02
Global Sports Podcast Network
like we want, uh,
00:19:09
Zak
Well, how many, you know, we've had, we had a couple of shots, I think the first game or so sure it came in and then I knew what, I think we had like seven last game. Two of those were the absolute sky high efforts of Suleimana and Taylor-Harvard-Bellis.
00:19:21
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah.
00:19:22
Zak
And that was basically that they kicked it after being bullied by the crowd for about 10 minutes solid.
00:19:27
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah.
00:19:27
Zak
So yeah, you're right. It's bizarre, very bizarre.
00:19:28
Global Sports Podcast Network
Uh, and it's because, yeah. um And that's really it. Like they don't have, uh, a ah ah philosophy or a style of play. They won't be knocking it around. They're just, they know that they have players that can play football.
00:19:41
Global Sports Podcast Network
They have these players that have these individual brilliance. Like Louis Diaz, is, is having a reasonably good season. Uh, but it's just a player of such quality. Like, uh, I took my wife to Anfield a couple of seasons ago when he was a reasonably new sign-in and just watching him warm up. It like, you look at him and go, wow, that's someone who can play ball. He knows what to do with a football. And, and are very few other clubs that could deal with that and accept it in this strange
00:20:19
Global Sports Podcast Network
philosophy-based world than Liverpool because their fans accept that and and actually I think the main reason is because as I alluded to earlier this safe philosophy and low-risk play is all part of the corporatisation of football and as corporate of a club as Liverpool are realistically and have all of these international markets and financial investments as a fan base and a city, Liverpool traditionally are still very anti-corporate. And
Resistance to Corporatization
00:20:54
Global Sports Podcast Network
so to not buy into that low risk corporate philosophy, you wouldn't expect it really from anyone as much as you would expect it from from them. It's just allow that breathing space for those players to have that individual brilliance, which you don't see as much across the board. there And there are still some clubs that do it
00:21:15
Global Sports Podcast Network
like it's not fully across the board yet there's still places for the Neil Warnock's of this world and those old school football managers and um um hopefully that's the resurgence we start to see because that's what i want but yeah we call it a beautiful game of chess but also it's a simple game where you kick the ball at the goal and if it goes in you win so
00:21:29
Zak
might My final... This is also true. only thing, the two points I have, do you think it's going to start dying of death now that even the supposed master of it all is now struggle-busting and you know has had a season which, yeah, okay, he's managed to get two wins under his belt, but after the run that they had of winless games, which essentially boils down to they lost Rodry,
00:21:56
Zak
you know, do you seem to think that other managers will take note of that and start to maybe want to change the way and I also think of sort of players like players turned managers sort of Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard, all these kind of players that also try to have like their own philosophies and then subsequently try and implement it in clubs without actually checking if those clubs can, you know, there there are added things in there as well. On the back of the corporatization of football, there was the whole Wayne Rooney wanting to film a relegation dogfight documentary during Plymouth's relegation, which obviously isn't helping either. But yeah, do you kind of see like with everything that's happened and the sort of way that new managers coming through seem to also be trying to follow the Pep Guardiola's of the world, or do you think it's going to start to die a death, or do you just think we're eventually going to have
00:22:42
Zak
a happy equilibrium of people that try to play a philosophy and people that don't add, you know.
00:22:48
Global Sports Podcast Network
yeah I hope so. I mean, I'm sure there's room for both, right? oh I personally believe my philosophy would be that you play you buy good players that you like and that you play them in their best positions and then you work that your system for that week around what players you have in positions that they can play and how that will affect your who you're playing against.
00:23:17
Global Sports Podcast Network
and
00:23:18
Zak
And even then, you need to be careful, because if not, you just do a Paris and German where you buy every good player you've ever heard of, stick them all in a team and wonder why they don't do well.
00:23:21
Global Sports Podcast Network
yeah
00:23:24
Global Sports Podcast Network
yeah yeah right back um yeah no exactly that um and that's what you can hope like and then you don't end up with situations that have caused us so much trouble you don't end up
00:23:26
Zak
Or nowadays, even even from an international perspective, you look at like England, the problem is is, well, where do we play all of these incredible football players? And the answer is, I guess, apparently we...
00:23:34
Global Sports Podcast Network
yeah right back
00:23:37
Zak
beautiful
00:23:38
Global Sports Podcast Network
yeah no exactly that and that's what you can hope light and then you don't end up with situations that have caused us so much trouble don't end up shoehorning Jack Stevens in at left back like how much more productive would our season have been if we played Carl Walker Peters in his actual position at right back when he's already one of the better players on the pitch and he's better when he plays on the right. It's just you let players play to their strengths and play the game and set them up for success and build upon that instead of trying to scratch this need to have a style and a system that you can
00:24:16
Global Sports Podcast Network
flip robots in and out of because that's that's not what I want from a game of football don't want it to become part of the corporate machine and yeah I think that's all I've got there we go that's how pep Guardiola ruined football
00:24:29
Zak
I've enjoyed it mate. It's been...
00:24:33
Zak
it's been It's been interesting. I think it it talks a lot about the modern game. I think it's also one of the reasons you're seeing such massive divides. It's also, in my opinion, one of the reasons that you're seeing these incredible players disappear off the big clubs and then not hit the heights they're supposed to.
00:24:49
Zak
And that's that's happening more and more and more as the years go by.
00:24:50
Global Sports Podcast Network
Yeah.
00:24:53
Zak
And then you're sometimes getting a player that's kind of come comes through and does really, really well and then goes elsewhere and then immediately falls down. And that's, yeah, it's not. So that's an ideal. So yeah, hopefully hopefully we'll see some change in the future.
00:25:06
Zak
it's Nothing is ever static, especially in football, you know.
00:25:09
Global Sports Podcast Network
No, and you're right as Man City have been sort of almost found out for part of this season, I'm sure that philosophies will evolve and people going against philosophies will evolve and over time, we'll see how it plays out, but bring back characters in football. I think that's what we all want, right?
00:25:29
Zak
That's what we would need, an entire entire Premier League full of Jose Mourinho's.
00:25:34
Global Sports Podcast Network
Absolutely. Who doesn't love it? Like not necessarily if he's in charge of your team, but as a neutral watching on, who doesn't want to see just something a bit controversial with a bit of spike and a bit of edge.
00:25:48
Global Sports Podcast Network
It's what it's all about.
00:25:50
Zak
and date date
00:25:52
Global Sports Podcast Network
Well, thank you very much for sticking with us today. It's been an interesting one. It's one that I've been been looking forward to for a long time. And yes, if you've enjoyed what you've heard, please give us a like, give us a rating.
00:26:05
Global Sports Podcast Network
Leave us a comment. Do you think Pep Guardiola ruined football or is this philosophy the way forward? Let us know. Thank you very much for listening today. Thanks for joining me, Zach, and putting up with my rant.
00:26:14
Zak
Pleasure mate.
00:26:16
Global Sports Podcast Network
and we will be back tomorrow for more.