Manchester City’s Kyle Walker celebrates with the trophy and teammates after winning the Premier League (Action Images via Reuters)
When the final whistle blew, as the stewards formed a human barricade to deny the ecstatic Manchester City fans from spilling onto the ground, as their talisman of the season, Phil Foden, soaked in the hugs of his teammates, Pep Guardiola quietly rushed into the tunnel, with an ascetic detachment from celebrations. Maybe, he had exhausted his emotions, he was leaping and high-fiving when City scored each of their three goals that kept tension and suspense at bay, he had flung a water bottle in angst when his team conceded a goal, a sumptuous scissor kick that could swell the fame of Mohammed Kudus, or violently slapping his fists to suggest that Tomas Soucek goal was off the arm. And it was chalked off.
Guardiola had run his emotions, just as the team had run their emotions too. Maybe, deep inside he, and his men, knew they would march to the title; that all the noise from outside of drama and nerves, was just noise. Maybe, he views feats of history with coldness. A man who likes the journey and process rather than destination and results. But when he begins to count of the treasure chest of feats he has achieved—the trebles with Barcelona and Manchester City, the gospeller of tika taka, the most radical football philosophy of this century, the intellectualization of the managing art, the most efficient proponent of false nines and inverted full-backs, the best manager of this century perhaps, the 21st century Cruyff—the most recent could be the most magnificent too. The moment he sealed his legacy in English football.
To win four titles in a row anywhere in the world is difficult, but nor unprecedented—Guardiola himself was part of the Barcelona side that won all four seasons from 1990-1994, Bayern Munich have claimed 11 on the spin—but in England it has been an elusive shore. A raft of legends have only watched it from afar, the title slipping through their palms.
🏆 MAN CITY ARE CHAMPIONS! 🏆 pic.twitter.com/I84b66E2AG
— Premier League (@premierleague) May 19, 2024
So, like the Invincibles of Wenger, the Magnificos of Guardiola have achieved something imperishable and immortal in England football, a feat he only seems capable of bettering or improving, that is if success does not breed boredom in him. The day his City was crowned champions for the tenth time in their history, and the sixth in seven years of Guardiola, he was symbolically coronated as one of the finest managers of the league ever, from Herbert Chapman through Matt Busby and Bill Shankly, Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson, inhabiting some other space beyond normal notions of sporting exceptionalism. The only questions that remain are if he is the finest ever the league has seen, or his side the most dominant side in the league’s history.
Such questions have no clear answers. But he and his team (rather teams) have recast the league in their image, and infused it with their ideals and beliefs. Every team wants to play like City—the league has embraced the possession style, the precedence of technique over physique and flair, and the obsession with the ball. Every manager wants to be like Pep Guardiola; every manager is rushing to their academy to fish out their own Phil Foden, the boy from Stockport down the road to Etihad adjudged the player of the season and whose blood and thunder brace sewed the historic moment for them; the scouts are scanning the La Liga for their next Rodri, the defensive midfielder with the passing vision of a playmaker and the striking finesse of a striker.
Your 2023/24 Premier League champions, @ManCity 🏆 pic.twitter.com/dWyzJaZmzT
— Premier League (@premierleague) May 19, 2024
Both were the most towering figures of the season. Not just because they scored in the title-decider, but because they sustained their impact throughout the season. Foden netted 19 goals and conjured eight assists; Rodri belted eight himself and plotted nine goals. His attacking output was better than the men who are paid to conjure attacks, the stalwarts Kevin de Bruyne and Bernardo Silva. And all this without compromising on his defensive duties. Little wonder that City has never lost a game whenever he has started, and little coincidence that City’s worst phase came when he was sitting out due to suspensions or injuries. “He’s able to do everything. The tempo he has, his character when the situation is going wrong, to step forward, go backwards, the ability to play short and long,” Guardiola would compliment him.
His versatility was all the more valuable in a season where Guardiola veered further away from his idealism. This was perhaps the most physical Guardiola side, the tallest and perhaps the most direct. It lacked the counterpunching vigour of last season or the passing purity of the classical Guardiola sides. The triumph was a statement of their steely resolve rather than a doctrine of style or beauty. They did not blow their prime contenders away this season, but stuttered and scraped past them. A goal against Arsenal was elusive in both legs; nerves were shred in both games against Tottenham Hotspur, and didn’t beat Liverpool and Chelsea. But they still wreaked goalmouth havoc, scored goals when it mattered, stitched an undefeated run of 23 games.
The lone quibble could be that they were less fluent and beauteous than his other avatars of Guardiola’s City, more machine-like. Fewer cutbacks, more goals from outside the box, more dribbling (Jeremy Doku would have struggled to get into most Guardiola teams of the past) and ball-carrying than passing and possessing, more frenzied, a less aesthetic version. If you had not seen Guardiola on the touchline, you wouldn’t believe it’s a team he has coached. Yet, they were unstoppable and irrepressible and that is the English premier league reality of our times. And the rest of the teams are merely living through it.
