There would have been a significant conversation between Toni Duggan and Pep Guardiola if she had only summoned the courage to approach him.
‘I just kind of wanted to sit down with him and talk football,’ she says of her time at Manchester City. ‘But I thought I’d never get away from him. You see him from a distance and he’s chewing someone’s ear off about football, and you just think, “Wow — I’d love to ask one question but I’d probably be there for a week”.’
So the nearest she got to discussing the passing game she has become even better acquainted with since moving to Barcelona two years ago was a slightly uncomfortable moment while training in the indoor dome at City’s Etihad Campus.
Toni Duggan (centre) in action during a passing drill in England training on Monday
The England team have adopted a philosophy similar to that of Man City's Pep Guardiola
‘He was just standing there watching me,’ she relates. ‘And I was like, “Oh, bloody hell. Do I stop? Shake his hand? Carry on and pretend that I can’t see Pep Guardiola?” So I went to stop and he was like, “No, no — continue”. So he just stood there. I did about two shuttles and then he just walked away. I was like, “Wow, thank God for that”.’
Duggan did not know in the winter of 2016 that the Guardiola philosophy would run through her entire football life. At Barcelona — where she hears so much talk about him and Johan Cruyff — and also now with Phil Neville’s England, where the passing philosophy is written through every training session and match.
Many of the players describe how training sessions start with Neville hollering, in Spanish, ‘rondos, rondos’ — the box routines in which players on the edges keep the ball away from two in the middle.
Duggan feels that Neville, who was ready to answer a question in Spanish at one of last week’s press conferences, took some of the philosophy from his brief time at Valencia, although it is the general England way.
The passing philosophy is written through every England training session and match
In games, players are expected to complete sequences of up to nine passes — drawing the opposition out towards them then executing a forward ball to break their lines. ‘Not really nine passes,’ jokes centre half Abbie McManus. ‘More like 90, to please Phil.’
A frequent source of humour in the dressing room at Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper, where Barcelona Femeni play, is Duggan’s suggestion that her team-mates should try the more direct, traditional English way.
‘I argue that they need to be more direct. They argue that I need to be more patient,’ she says. ‘It’s just a joke. I love the style otherwise I wouldn’t
