Champions League Mahrez leads Guardiola's Manchester City to the final
May 29, 2011
. That day, on these same pages, there was a headline as forceful as it was accurate: "The Masterpiece of an Age." The
Barcelona
of
Pep Guardiola
, one of the best teams that has seen football, trod a new peak for the win their second
European Cup
in three years, the fourth in the history of the club. Only a year later, however, would disarmament arrive. Guardiola, "empty", would leave Barça after adding a new
Copa del Rey
to their showcases. And there began a new story in two directions: that of knowing if the Barça team could retain its excellence without the coach -except in 2015, it did not succeed- and that of discovering if he could build it in another latitude, far from the
Camp Nou
and
Messi
,
Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Piqué
...
May 29, 2021
. Exactly a decade later, the world will finally know the answer to that second question. Because, yes, Guardiola has managed to prolong his success in both
Munich
(seven titles) and
Manchester
(nine to date), but the most coveted trophy in club football, the one that led
Bayern
and
City
to deliver the keys to his changing rooms, has been until now unattainable for him far from Spain. On the horizon, the challenge of being the fourth coach in history with three European Cups (
Paisley
,
Ancelotti
and
Zidane
) and the sixth to win the trophy with two different clubs (
Happel
,
Hitzfeld
,
Mourinho,
Heynckes
and
Ancelotti
). Adding up the one he won as a player, he would remain one of the five achieved by
Miguel Muñoz
and Ancelotti, omnipresent in this list.
A title would also allow Guardiola to claim his legacy in its purest version. In Barcelona he started out conditioned by a very defined club identity, no matter how much it largely coincided with his own approaches. In Munich, his way of understanding football and Bayern's historical idiosyncrasy ended up colliding. In Manchester, however, he received a blank canvas on which to express himself with total independence with almost infinite resources. Of the squad he inherited in 2016, only four footballers survive:
Fernandinho
,
De Bruyne
,
Sterling
and
Agüero
, who will leave the club next month. The rest of the players have been signed -or promoted, the case of
Foden
and
Eric García
- the Catalan coach.
THE CULMINATION OF A PROJECT
"We have invested a lot of money, but it is not only that. If people want to think that, fine, but there is a lot of work behind it," Guardiola defended on Tuesday after defeating
PSG
.
And although the reason assists him, the data reveal that City is the club that has invested the most money in the last five years.
Barça (1,040) exceeds its 960 million euros destined for transfers, but in the balance between expenses and income it has no rival: that of City is 623 kilos while in the rest of Europe only its neighbor United (553) exceeds the 400 barrier.
Such a monetary injection has allowed him to win three of the five
Premierships
that he has played, a background that more than satisfies a hobby that, like all English women, puts the league title before the European one. But City had already raised two Premier before his arrival. The never-disguised goal of Emirati ownership is to reach the continental summit. "Unfortunately, it seems that reaching this final gives meaning to what we have done in the last four or five years and that is a bit unfair," claims Guardiola, again with great reason. More than that, the
Istanbul
quote
it is the reflection of the definitive boiling point of a project that, paradoxically, has reached its maturity from defensive solidity and not from its offensive virtuosity, which was always present.
Pep's long wait has therefore had a poetic meaning.
Now is when his work is entirely his and is completed in the absence of only one verse to write, the most important of all: winning the Champions League a decade later.
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