The most influential man in English football has never set foot in Blankenhain or been to St George’s Park. But the name of Pep Guardiola floats with gravity in the concentration of the England team in Germany as in the sports city of the federation and its surroundings, not always pronounced with joy by the coach, Gareth Southgate, who seems to live more and more with each day disgust with the idea that the Manchester City coach irremediably conditions his work, and even overshadows him. It is not in vain that Kyle Walker, John Stones and Phil Foden, three of the five dressing room leaders along with Declan Rice and Harry Kane, owe their four Premier League titles in a row and their consecration as world-class figures to their relationship with the Spanish coach.
The England that debuts today against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen (9:00 p.m., La1) will compete with what is probably its best squad of the last half century. The maturation of Warthon, Mainoo, Bowen, Eze and Bellingham adds to the structural players a battalion of companions of a general level that is difficult to find in another team. But the backbone of the team is made up of the most experts, and the foundations include Walker and Stones, two essential defenders to give flight to a coverage line that would otherwise threaten to drag down the entire building. The paradox of Guardiola is that he is considered a master of attack, but much of his work consisted of creating colossal defenses.
“Guardiola reinvented my brain,” says Stones, who explains that the coach pushed him to move from defense to midfield, a circumstance that is equivalent to going from monitoring threats coming from the front to learning to live surrounded by dangers in all directions. “The guys who play between the lines have done it all their lives, and they have that 360-degree vision. Silva, for example, knew where everyone was without looking. I had to learn it little by little, first playing easy, and then taking risks with every turn he made with the ball.”
Thanks to Stones’ transformation, today England has a central defender capable of handling himself in small spaces like a playmaker, a very powerful weapon to surprise rivals. With Walker, Guardiola’s influence has been more psychological than tactical. The City coach has turned the right-back, a synthesis of the combative and athletic values of British football, into a model of leadership, concentration and rigor in the brand, capable of engaging all his defensive teammates with his aggressiveness and sense of duty . He turned 34 but his muscular quality refers to a historical chain of incombustible full-backs: from Facchetti to Alves through Carboni and Roberto Carlos. The Sheffield player, tormented in his private life and the target of the yellow press, finds liberation on the pitch. “I never get up in the morning and say ‘I don’t want to train today’, I love playing football,” he says; “Football is my place of happiness.”
When Guardiola signed for City in 2016, England had just been eliminated from the European Championship against Iceland. Since then, the team has played in the semifinals of the World Cup in Russia, the quarterfinals in Qatar, and the final of the 2021 European Championship. “They are close to a title,” Guardiola observed a couple of months ago; “England is really close. You just have to have faith. You have to believe it. If they believe it, they can do it.”
The anxiety surrounding the English federation is proportional to the time that has passed since the team has not lifted a trophy: July 30, 1966, the date on which Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup. The desperation of the leaders has translated into more or less esoteric projects, such as the one that ended up putting the configuration of the list of penalty takers in the shootout that ended in the fiasco of a Google robot in the hands of the artificial intelligence of a Google robot. 2021, in the Wembley final that Italy won.
This week TheAthletic published the last scientific superstition that the FA embarked on. It involves the hiring of a Mahori coach, Owen Eastwood, to instruct the players in the art of getting along, of empathizing, of feeling that “united they are eternal.” An anthropological concept that the aborigines of New Zealand call “whakapapa”. Eastwood did a years-long treatment with the entire English team squad, in a momentous attempt to overcome five decades of disunity, mistrust and mediocrity. It is not known if he succeeded. For now, the data shows that Pep Guardiola was more influential.
Not only because up to eight players coached by him once participated in this Euro cycle. More than 30 players from the City academy have been selected for different categories in England since 2016, with great results. England under-21s won the 2023 European Championship for the first time in 39 years with Palmer, James Trafford, Taylor Harwood Bellis and Tommy Doyle, all from City, and with a coach, Lee Carsey, who was under Guardiola.
“Guardiola has had a big impact,” admits Southgate. In Germany he makes himself felt.
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