Genius is usually a stranger to serenity and so it has been with Pep Guardiola. Even as the football world has bowed before him, there has always been a restless, searching, questioning quality to his triumph.
The level of his psychological intensity has sometimes been faintly unnerving and yet also endlessly inspiring, especially to his players, who feed off the relentlessness of his hunger for success, and fans, who love the sight of his emotional investment in the job.
It is his intensity that defines him, which was part of the reason why, when he walked into the press conference theatre that abuts Manchester City’s training complex on Friday afternoon, a hundred pairs of eyes fixed on the still-vivid cut on the bridge of his nose.
That wound and a collection of angry red lines on his shaved head, inflicted by his own hand during City’s 3-3 Champions League draw against Feyenoord on Tuesday night, had borne alarming testimony to the extent of Guardiola’s frustration and his despair.
In those circumstances, it can feel as if there is a fine line between a press conference and an exercise in voyeurism. Certainly, many inside the game felt concerned for him, worried by the toll the job and City’s situation seemed to be taking on him.
‘That’s something very personal,’ the Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta said, ‘but I feel a lot of sympathy for all my colleagues because I know the job, how ruthless this industry is and how we get judged just by one thing: results.’
Pep Guardiola’s intensity is what defines him, and the wounds inflicted by his own hand on Tuesday bore testimony to his frustration and despair
His injuries come amid City’s troubling run which has left them six matches without a win
Questions have been asked of the Spaniard but he is the leading manager of his generation
City had lost their previous five games in succession and the way they conceded three goals in the last 15 minutes to Feyenoord made it feel as if they had lost a sixth as well.
Guardiola indicated that the scars had been caused by the sharpness of his finger nails as he tore, distractedly, at his skin.
Part of the fascination with those scars was that there was an obvious symbolism to them. It was as if they were physical manifestations of the stunning reversal of fortune that has afflicted City in the past month or more and the troubles which beset them.
It is not an unusual theme. There was a film in the late 1980s called How to Get Ahead in Advertising where the main character developed a carbuncle on his neck that reflected his unease with his career.
But if Richard E Grant’s carbuncle kept growing, Guardiola’s scrapes and scratches already looked less angry by Friday afternoon and he did not sit in front of his audience to indulge himself with self-pity or self-loathing.
City, even with the vast state resources at their disposal, are heavily dependent on Guardiola. The truth as they sail into a perfect storm of Liverpool’s resurgence and their own energy-sapping fight to the death with the Premier League over more than 100 charges of financial wrongdoing, is that they are more reliant on him than ever.
Sometimes it feels as if the genius and the reputation and the allure of Guardiola are all that stands between City and the fall of the edifice that the riches of Abu Dhabi have built so painstakingly. It is the reason why Guardiola agreeing a new two-year deal earlier this month was so critical to the club.
Without him, many would focus on the more unpalatable aspects of the ownership of the modern City. With him, it is hard not to be beguiled by the beauty of the football City play.
In the face of the maelstrom that swirls around the club, Guardiola looked ahead to City’s clash with Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday, that will see them fall 11 points behind Arne Slot’s team if they lose, and chose quiet but fierce defiance. ‘We will be back,’ Guardiola promised. ‘I don’t know when, but it is the truth.’
To make matters worse, City now face the challenge of taking on title rivals Liverpool on Sunday
One factor for City’s poor form has been the absence of Ballon d’Or winner Rodri
He spoke softly, as he often does at these press conferences, and there was a nasal tone to his speech that suggested he was battling a virus, but he wanted to make it clear he saw City’s situation as a test of character that he would not shirk.
‘Success is how many times you stand up when you fall again and again,’ Guardiola said. ‘It’s the only way we know. Of course, I’m thinking, what can I do for the players to help them but in a long career as a manager you live through different situations.
‘When you live through a period like this, live it and accept it. Don’t blame. Don’t run away from your responsibility. I want it. I want the responsibility. At this football club, you have to win and if you don’t, you’ll be in trouble.
‘People say, ‘Pep, why is he not in trouble? Why is he not sacked?’ But what we have done over the last eight years is why I have this margin. The people here rely on me. The moment I feel I am not positive for the club, another one will come. The club will take the solution, the decision they have to take.
‘I don’t want to run away. I want to be there. I want to make a rebuild of the team in many aspects from now until the end of the season and the next season, to try to continue up there. I have to prove myself now.’
The last time City won a game was on October 26, at home to Southampton in the Premier League. Since then, they have lost to Spurs, Bournemouth, Sporting Lisbon, Brighton and Spurs again and drawn with Feyenoord, which felt like a loss. In the process, they have conceded 13 goals and scored seven.
They are still in the upper reaches of the Premier League but they are eight points behind Liverpool. They are 17th in the Champions League table and, with away matches at Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain among their remaining fixtures, their progress to the knockout phase is far from assured.
And yet only idiot voices would call for Guardiola to be fired. He is the outstanding coach of his generation and his hunger appears undimmed. In fact, if anything, he appears even more driven than ever.
City are still in the upper reaches of the Premier League but are eight points behind Liverpool
The last time City won a game was on October 26 at home to Southampton in the league
He did point out, as gently as he could, that City have lost their best player, Rodri, for the rest of the season and that they have been without four central defenders and that any team would suffer in those circumstances, no matter how good their squad.
Guardiola, don’t forget, has just led City to their fourth league title in succession, a level of dominance unprecedented in top-flight English football. It is only November and even if City are on the kind of run they have never experienced under Guardiola, he has all the managerial qualities to restore the club to its former hegemony. Write him off now and repent at leisure.
Most City fans accept that notion readily. Some of the older ones are even admitting to enjoying tinges of nostalgia about supporting a team that is enduring adversity again after such a prolonged spell of excellence.
When I was in south Manchester earlier this week, I went for a walk with a friend whose dad used to take us to Maine Road, where he had season tickets in the North Stand, when we were eight or nine in the mid-1970s, and who has supported City through all the dark days.
He said he had even found himself singing one of the bittersweet songs beloved of City fans in those days, a time when City were regarded with affection by much of the rest of the English game because of the consistency of their misfortunes.
He recited it for me as we walked. ‘We never win at home and we never win away,’ the song goes. ‘We lost last week and we lost today. We don’t give a f***, cos we’re all p***** up. MCFC, OK.’
There is a sense that that is partly how Guardiola feels, too. Not in terms of not caring, obviously, but in terms of the defiance of the sentiment. The City boss kept returning to the image of a person being knocked down and getting up again as a metaphor for success.
He suggested that, actually, what City have been experiencing these past few weeks, all the adversity that has come their way, the conceding of goals, the heavy defeats, is more representative of the game than the phenomenal run of success they have enjoyed.
His point was that every team has to suffer sooner or later, however brilliant they are, and that now it is City’s turn. He suggested that he and his players may discover more about themselves in these circumstances than when everything is running smoothly.
Guardiola insisted ‘that every team has to suffer sooner or later, however brilliant they are’
‘I asked for that challenge and to do it,’ Guardiola said, ‘because I feel it. I know what we need and what we have to do. We don’t have that consistency right now but which team is consistent in a decade of time?
‘It’s not nice to live, but what do you expect? That everything is easy? It’s easy when everyone is fit and in their prime. Now, no. I have to put myself forward now. It’s not an excuse that Rodri is not there.
‘What should I do? Cry all the time? Because the four central defenders have not been there? I have to find a solution and I’m trying every day. We cannot forget that three months ago, we were Premier League champions. Football changes.
‘The only question I put here on the table that looks like an excuse is the squad is really good but we don’t have the squad. It’s not just Rodri, it’s many players. We have played two or three weeks without four central defenders and two holding midfielders.
‘The path to be sustainable is not there and so of course it’s more difficult. Step by step. Did we play bad against Feyenoord? But in the end, it’s not about playing well. It’s about winning.
‘Are we in a crisis? It’s up to you in what you write. We are second in the table. We are not in a good moment in terms of results. We play more than decent but not enough to win games.
Liverpool are firm favourites to deepen Man City’s misery when they clash on Sunday afternoon
‘We maybe have to live that as a club and live these situations. When a team has controlled the Premier League for many, many years, it’s normal that the situation happens. Accept that maybe the exception was in the past, not now.’
In the midst of this maelstrom, this situation that Guardiola has never lived through before, City must visit a ground where he has never won except in the Covid season when there were no fans at Anfield.
Liverpool are in a rich vein of form that gives them a good claim to being the best club side in the world at the moment. They brushed Real Madrid aside on Wednesday. They are firm favourites to deepen City’s misery.
City may well lose. They may well fall to what would be a sixth defeat in seven games. But as long as Guardiola remains, one thing is sure: they will be back.
