We will probably never know for certain when exactly was the moment when Pep Guardiola decided to quit as manager of FC Barcelona. But the Guardiola who spoke to the media after Barca’s defeat by Chelsea on Tuesday was I think no longer committed to another season. Some commentators suggested he was exhausted. To me, Guardiola looked liberated.
Much has been said of Guardiola as a person who , both as player and manager, had always chosen his next move on his own terms. And yet circumstances I think combined with the ego to make of that game a particularly cathartic experience: the realisation that in that evolution in the history of FC Barcelona, of which Guardiola had been such an integral part, the time had come for a different manager to take Barca into the future. A great team like Barca looked tired and lacking a winning formula.
Guardiola over the four seasons he has been at the helm has given Barca his life and soul. Winning seventeen titles has involved blood, sweat, and tears, with Mourinho proving a particularly taxing opponent, showing little respect, stirring animosity, suspicion, envy, fuelling hate- not the football Guardiola wanted to be involved in then, now, or in the next season, but one he found himself forced to face up to in defence of his club’s integrity.
The Guardiola years have brought moments of extraordinary joy and satisfaction, but there has been suffering too- and that is football . And yet Barca under Guardiola may have got to such a level of excellence , immersed as it was in collective adulation, as to lose sight of its hidden frailties. Such was its narcissism.
But none of this should take away from Guardiola’s huge contribution to Barca’s greatness, and the development of Spanish national football. At his best Guardiola showed a rare combination in football of grace, style, and nobility touched with mysticism, like a beautiful, illuminated apostle of the game, painted by El Greco. Without him Barca will struggle to regain such heavenly heights despite Guardiola’s unwavering belief that those youngsters, like himself and Tito Vilanova , who emerge from La Masia have an indestructible Barca strain in their DNA.
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