The Pep Premium: Zinchenko & Jesus prove value of Guardiola's coaching
Daniel Edwards
- 21 Aug 2022 19:25 BST
- 4 min read
If nothing else, sitting down to watch Pep Guardiola's Manchester City is usually a solid guarantee of 90 entertaining minutes.
City shared the honours with Newcastle United on Sunday in a scintillating 3-3 draw which preserves both teams' unbeaten start to the season.
The visitors took their season's goal tally up to nine in three Premier League games as a smash and grab double from Erling Haaland and Bernardo Silva inside four minutes erased Newcastle's lead, but in truth both teams could have finished with even more.
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Guardiola's men for one racked up 21 shots, 10 of which were steered at the sensational Nick Pope, whose class act between the posts explained better than anything why the ex-Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss did not come away with all three points.
At this point it is no surprise at all to see City put in this kind of expansive, no-holds-barred performance; nor that Guardiola's former pupils are doing exactly the same thing away from the Etihad Stadium.
Over at Arsenal, to take one example, the Gunners faithful could not be happier with the two players picked up from City at the start of the summer.
It is testament to City's incredible strength in depth that talents like Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko could be considered expendable, but the pair have fit straight in at the Emirates and helped their new club begin the new season in fine form - better, in fact, than even Pep's team.
Similarly, their progress since moving to City - Zinchenko was an unknown teenager with barely 30 senior games under his belt in Russia with Ufa, Jesus only slightly more renown thanks to his exploits at Palmeiras - is a reflection on one of football finest coaches, who improves his playing staff better than perhaps anyone else in the game.
The Spaniard's record of player development perhaps has only one counterpart in the modern game, that of the great Marcelo Bielsa - whose latest success stories include former Leeds duo Kalvin Philips and Raphinha, the former of which is now in Pep's City squad.
It should not come as much surprise then that before even beginning as a coach Guardiola sought the Argentine out, tracking him down to a barbecue in the rural depths of Santa Fe province where, legend has it, the pair conversed about football for 11 uninterrupted hours after the meat was served.
"It was an incessant coming and going of football concepts, frenetic debates about different teams," Spanish writer and film-maker David Trueba revealed in the coach's biography Che Pep.
"Of positional analysis on the field, of anecdotes. They started and would not stop. It was an intense chat, I obviously cannot share details which will remain inside those four walls."
Whatever was shared that chilly spring evening in October 2006, Guardiola took on board the principle Bielsa teaching: that finding and moulding the right player and finding the right tactical set-up are inseparable.
Pep's roll of honour certainly makes for impressive reading. Lionel Messi for one, who under his tenure went from promising La Masia graduate to the best player on the face of the planet in a few short years.
At Barcelona alone the coach converted the Argentine into a false nine, dragged Javier Mascherano back into defence and made Sergio Busquets the final piece of his midfield puzzle when the player was yet to make a single first-team appearance.
That magic touch continued at Bayern and now City, and shows no slowing down. The likes of Rodri, Silva and Phil Foden are Pep's latest success stories; while the though of what he could do with a spectacular talent like Erling Haaland given the time and opportunity is enough to make the mouth water.
No wonder that City's players carry some of the highest transfer values on the planet: after working alongside Pep, it is the rare footballer indeed who does not see a vast improvement on the field.
