sport news We should savour Pep Guardiola while we can. English football without the ... trends now
Pep Guardiola has a cold. He sits on a dais in an auditorium at the Etihad Campus, his eyes darting around, taking everything in, examining everything, surveying the rows of seats that rise away from him and the journalists sitting in them and waiting for the questions to come.
When he speaks, it is in a voice that barely rises above a whisper. To begin with, it seems he is being deliberately taciturn. Sometimes, that is his way. To begin with, it seems he is stripping all the emotion out of his words because he knows Anfield lives on emotion. He does not want to feed it before the opera that will be acted and sung there on Sunday.
He is asked first about the things Liverpool’s vice-captain Trent Alexander-Arnold said about how triumphs mean more to Liverpool than Manchester City because Liverpool do not have the riches City possess.
He is expecting the question. He looks bored by the room’s attempt to stoke a fire of animosity. And so he responds with what sounds like a prepared answer. He speaks as if he is repeating a line he has learned by rote from a script, a line he has little appetite for.
He is asked the same question about Alexander-Arnold twice and so he repeats the same answer, refusing to be drawn, studiously expressionless. ‘I wish him well,’ the City manager says. ‘I wish him a speedy recovery to come back to the pitch as soon as possible. Speedy recovery and next question.’
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A couple of times, Guardiola looks down and covers his mouth with his hand and coughs quietly. ‘Frank Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel,’ Gay Talese wrote in his famous Esquire essay, ‘…it robs him of that uninsurable jewel, his voice.’
It is not the same with Guardiola. A cold does not steal the essence of Guardiola away. His voice is not his primary gift. His gift is an intensity that cannot be quenched, that burns in his eyes even when his voice falters. His gift is his relentlessness, his acumen, his refusal to rest, his refusal to let others rest, even superstars.
Margaret Thatcher only slept four hours a night, it is said. ‘Then she was stronger than me,’ Guardiola, 53, says. ‘I need more.’ But it is hard to imagine him switching off. Ever. It is hard to imagine him being able to relax or spend a single moment where he is not thinking about football and talking about football.
He talks about that for a while. Not in relation to Jurgen Klopp, his great rival, who he collides with one last time on Sunday in a titanic clash that may decide the destination of the title. But rather the pressures that any leading manager faces now. The pressures he faces.
The temptation is to think that when Guardiola leaves, the whole edifice that was painstakingly built for him will come crashing down in his wake
‘All of us have ups and downs as a manager,’ Guardiola says. ‘We feel guilty. We feel a responsibility for many people who trust you, for the club you represent. That is normal. In Barcelona, I was really tired and so I left. Here, I stayed longer than I thought I would when I arrived. I think every case is different.
‘There
