You won’t see a player like Ronaldinho anymore and Guardiola is to blame. Weiss praises him, United legends say he killed football – Other – Football

After all, Gaudí was one of the most famous people in his profession, and so is Pep Guardiola. We can safely call him Mr. Perfect, because football in his presentation is often like that. As a coach, he has already won seventeen rare trophies.

But perfection, precision, precision and flawlessness, isn’t it boring sometimes? Doesn’t football need a little chaos? Individual championship even at the cost of human failure? Really, didn’t coach Guardiola “kill” our beloved football?

Because many think so. That he is too perfect and predictable. That the excitement had gone out of him.

I have to have a ball

Guardiola “infected” Luis Aragonés, under whom the Spaniards began to play not only spectacular, but also effective football. “The team holding the ball cannot score a goal. On the contrary, he has all the prerequisites to give it,” Aragonés used to say.

Guardiola perfected it. When Manchester City lost 2-3 to Wolves last year, the ball possession statistics were even more interesting than the result – just 37.8 percent of one of the best teams in the world. It was something similar, as if one of the sprinters overtook Tadej Pogačar in the mountains.

Something unprecedented, because the 53-year-old native of Santpedor will endure this number. Apart from this duel, he never got below 45 percent. Since his arrival at City, he has averaged 67 percent of possession per game and by the end of 2022, his players have passed the ball 165,189 times. Sovereignly the most in the entire Premier League.

All this with a respectable pass success rate – 88.77.

That is Pep Guardiola, the man under whom the most disciplined football in the world is played. Under his leadership, Barcelona already adopted the ethos that they always need to have the ball at their feet at all costs, and when they get it, the whole team automatically moves to the opponent’s half.

And in case he loses it, the task is very clear – to get it back as soon as possible.

High line and pressure play… It is a very intelligent tactic and experts believe that if the team adheres to it with “Guardiola” precision, it is almost unbeatable.

This is also why Guardiola had a fundamental problem with Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the past. If someone interfered with his strategy, he had to leave. Notes are immutable. And only he can hold them.

It’s not easy

One of his football mentors, coach Juanma Lillo, provided an unusual insight into this football philosophy in the past. Attack and defense are said to be one and the same – it defends when it attacks, and it attacks when it defends itself.

There is no doubt that it is an effective weapon, because today you cannot get to the big cup without total “dominance on the ball”. The last one was perhaps in the Champions League with Inter Milan in the summer of 2010 under Jose Mourinho. He is said to have found the recipe for Guardiola’s boring football – the “parked bus” that the fans hated.

Guardiola won all available trophies in his first season in Barcelona and won the double in the next two. His team dominated the mighty La Liga and today they are doing the same at Manchester City.

However, whether his tactics are a positive development for this sport is another matter.

Gary Neville, the legendary defender from rivals United, subtly named the “problem”.

“To say that I’m bored with them is like poking a hornet’s nest, because calling City a boring team is not correct. They play excellent football. It’s hard for me to watch him, but when they took Haaland off, they at least looked a little more imperfect. Come on, say, isn’t it a bit boring?

Guardiola fought back the next day. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

Many blame him for the gradual disappearance of unrepeatable moments. Football, a game once celebrated for its unpredictable magic and dazzling artistry, is said to be becoming – to watch – too boring. According to former stars, the numbers overcame the skills themselves.

Today’s players do not want to take risks, they prefer safety, the kind that will statistically sound positive on paper.

Finally, consider the development itself, perhaps think of the ball magician Ronaldinho. His unmistakable passes, joyous touch, smile, all of that made his football an exciting experience.

Pelé and Maradona, two of the greatest players in history, the former’s goalscoring record is legendary, but what really set him apart was his ingenuity. Maradona’s “goal of the century” against England at the 1986 World Cup was again proof of football genius and unrestrained talent.

Messi, Ronaldo, Kaká, Zidane, Totti, Beckham… Where have the other free football souls gone?

You won’t see Ronaldinho

“It seems to me that everyone wants to play the same way, hold the ball, use a lot of short passes. But all players are not the same. Coaches should choose the game system that they have players for.

If our defenders Šuchančok or Chrenko passed the ball two or three times with goalkeeper Hýll, people would whistle. We moved into the attack faster, easier,” Jozef Bubenko, former Inter Bratislava coach, with whom he won two consecutive “doubles” at the turn of the millennium, told us a few years ago.

“Now the players exchange the ball twenty times and they still haven’t crossed half the pitch. That’s supposed to be modern. Combination play for many passes. But I don’t enjoy it too much. In the match, the spectators see three to four hundred passes, but the shots on goal are 3:2,” he added.

It suggests that the animality is disappearing from football. It’s all about the numbers. Bubenek’s followers no longer focus on football as a whole, but on its structure.

The result is sophisticated defense systems, but lacks free expression on the pitch. Guardiola is an absolute example of this, his teams dominate possession and control the action through hundreds of precise passes.

However, it is not only the older generation of coaches who object. A few days ago, Patrice Evra, the former full-back of Manchester United, who ended his career in the 2019 season, also spoke.

In a podcast with former teammate Rio Ferdinand, the 43-year-old Frenchman explained that the obsession with replicating Guardiola’s style is destroying football and could mean that the extraordinary talents of Ronaldinho and Eden Hazard will no longer be found.

“I think Guardiola is one of the best managers, but at the same time Guardiola killed football. And when I say that people will think I’m saying that because I played for United and he’s managing City, I’m not.

It’s because we have robots on the field today. Everyone wants you to play like Guardiola, even the goalkeeper has to wear the number ten. But why is everyone copying him? Don’t we have any creativity anymore?

No genius? It seems you will never see players like Ronaldinho and Hazard again because when he is young these coaches will tell him: ‘if you don’t pass the ball I will put you on the bench’.”