Guardiola concentrates the attack in his most difficult Premier | Soccer | Sports

It was more than 20 degrees in Manchester this Sunday and a crowd in short sleeves watched him when Pep Guardiola left the locker room last, after his players and his assistants, and after the West Ham squad had spread out on the grass and the bank. He was dressed in a thick turtleneck wool sweater, the kind used by halibut fishermen in the North Sea. Here is a superstitious person, noted the British press. The uniform that had protected him during the harsh winter, throughout the 32-game unbeaten streak that began after losing against Villa on December 6, accompanied the City coach on the last day of the championship and he did not take it off until that the victory was not confirmed. If supernatural powers had to be invoked, he did it. Because if the Santpedor coach was sure of one thing, it was that this Premier League would be the most difficult to win of the eight he had undertaken. He warned his players before making his debut against Burnley in the middle of August: “This year we will carry a backpack fuller of stones than ever.”

The complacency that naturally tends to weigh on teams that win a treble – League, Cup and Champions League, the collection achieved in 2023 – threatened to weigh down the City players just when radical plans were being drawn up in Europe’s main sports cities to stop the most famous and sophisticated of the attacks. This has been warned since the summer of 2023 by various experts who prefer anonymity and who work with the technical secretariats of Bayern, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Arsenal. Except for Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, which flatly refused to retreat, even the most powerful teams on the continent, and also those that boasted of being offensive, planned and executed exceptional approaches against City. That day the tactic consisted of fighting for the glory that means stopping Haaland, De Bruyne, Foden and Bernardo Silva in their tracks. To do this, they transformed the low block into a collected block in the penalty area.

If before the most conservative rivals retreated with eleven or ten players in a 25-meter strip up to their own goal line, closing the field from side to side, now they also began to curl up their wings. Where the wingers or full-backs had closed the outer lanes, they began to move inwards, freeing the way for City’s attackers on the outside in exchange for protecting their centre-backs and thus forcing Walker, Doku or Grealish on duty, to throw centers into the pile. The spectacle was unprecedented. Teams that in the last two years had invested more than 300 million euros in signings, such as Newcastle; societies that have signed contracts for one billion euros since 2022, such as Chelsea; or like United, which reinforced itself with more than 400 million in that period, they resolved that on the day they faced City, in addition to withdrawing, they would curl up.

For several days at the start of the season, City was blocked. Erling Haaland’s crisis did not take long to manifest itself. The Norwegian, who had scored 36 goals in 35 games in the 2022-23 Premier League, finished this league with 27 in 30 games. Too many, given the circumstances. Haaland tried to look for spaces to get clear in depth. But there weren’t any anymore. The match against Arsenal at the Etihad, on March 31, defined an era. “Arsenal has a better squad than City,” observed an advisor close to the London club’s technical secretariat; “You just have to look at the benches and the starting midfielders. But Arteta came out to play on the counterattack!” Guardiola’s bench had Grealish and Doku on the wingers, Lewis as a winger, Stones as a pivot, Álvarez as a forward and Matheus as an interior; while Arteta’s had Thomas Partey as a pivot, Martinelli and Trossard as wingers, and Tomiyasu and Zinchenko as full-backs. Rodri and Kovacic played in City’s midfield, and Jorginho and Rice played in Arsenal’s midfield. With tools comparable to their rival, Arteta’s team did not have the ball for more than 30%.

Contrary to his habits, the San Sebastian coach did what Madrid did in the Champions League: he ordered a general retreat and only put pressure at specific moments. At the end of the match, after a 0-0 draw that left the championship up in the air, Guardiola issued his verdict: “I am satisfied because I have always recognized my team on the field.” The message was clear: Arteta’s team had been deformed beyond recognition. This is what the advisors of the owner of Stan Kroenke, the owner of Arsenal, thought, the man who signed Arteta at Christmas 2019, as they say, “so that he could develop Guardiola’s model.” Four years and 500 million in transfers later, the anti-Guardiola He was about to win the Premier. Arsenal’s 89 points this season were only bettered by two second-place finishers in the last three decades. They are normally used to lift the trophy.

“How do you want to lose?”

“The only certainty is defeat,” Guardiola explained this Sunday. “The only thing you can decide is how you want to lose. In that, the team never let me down.”

City played as they wanted, always proactive. He reacted to the coiled block by attacking it at its core. Almost without hanging centers that almost inevitably ended up evacuated by the rival pivots or defenders. This season City finished the season with a total of 469 crosses hanging over the opposing area: a drop compared to the 542 in the 2016/17 season, the 489 in the 17/18 season, the 533 in the 18/19 season, the 707 from 19/20, or the 525 from last year.

On Sunday, City’s goals against West Ham, one of the strongest lower blocks in Europe, were the sublimation of the highest version of the attack: all inside. Even more difficult. A new link in Guardiola’s evolutionary chain. With De Bruyne and Foden on track with Haaland at 1-0, with Haaland dropping to midfield like Griezmann to associate at 2-0, with Foden entering through the central lane and with the wingers as instruments of association rather than the overflow attached to the wing and center. The score was 3-1, with a shot from Rodri, who entered through the eightcompleted the feat.

“For a team that wins the treble, regaining competitive hunger twice a week is not easy,” Bernardo Silva said a month ago. City not only retained the fighting spirit. On the way to his sixth Premier League, Guardiola gave another twist to attacking football.

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