Pep Guardiola's off-the-scale intensity makes us ponder the possibility of loving football too much

Guardiola's relentless perfectionism was on public display right until the final day of Manchester City's treble-winning season
Guardiola's relentless perfectionism was on public display right until the final day of Manchester City's treble-winning season Credit: PA

In a week where Manchester City have been forced into wrestling with the wider context of their domestic treble, this was a captivatingly contextless moment. Pep Guardiola, giving it the Guardiolian minimum of one hundred and eleven per cent, providing the backing vocals for a live performance of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” at Manchester Cathedral.

As he bounces, beams and - allegedly, it should be said - lip-syncs his way through the song’s least disastrous public rendition in the space of 48 hours, your first impulse is one of relief on Guardiola’s part. After nine months of considerable tactical and psychological toil, three trophies and one tragicomic Champions League collapse, he was finally allowing himself to let his remaining hair down.

And yet, several hours deep into City’s day of trichotomous celebrations, there is still more than a trace of Work Pep. The insatiable football super-nerd who has furiously burned his way through three massive jobs and 20 major trophies in the last decade.

The elite-level idealist who has tweaked tiki-taka into its most brutally ruthless, ball-hogging form. The furious perfectionist who very possibly pored over hours of video footage of all previous open-top bus parades to see if Manchester City's open-top bus could parade even better.

Jose Mourinho’s recent professional descent apart, few have done more to convince us of the public and private stresses of modern football management than Guardiola. “Four years is an eternity,” he sighed as his Barcelona reign came to an end, much of it spent trying to outplay Real Madrid and and out-sarcasm Mourinho, who he once witheringly hailed as "the chief, the f------ man" before another fraught Clasico clash of cultures.

Spanish newspapers enthusiastically pointed out how much he had visibly aged between 2008 and 2012 (he’d simply shaved his head, although the point was probably still valid) but the wear and tear was more on an emotional level: at 41, Guardiola took that year’s sabbatical in New York.

Finally, after three more draining seasons with Bayern Munich (three Bundesliga titles, three crushing Champions League semi-final exits), Guardiola brought his contagious work ethic to the Premier League, which soon witnessed first-hand the level of intensity he maintains in almost every managerial scenario.

We now had the weekly spectacle of seeing just how far Guardiola’s patience would stretch. Even the banality of pre-match TV interviews (“three changes from midweek Pep, what’s the thinking there?”) managed to elicit that peculiar smile - 10% friendliness, 20% confusion, 30% professionalism, 40% disdain - of a man occupying his own, very busy little world.

A hard-fought win over Burnley with ten men at the Etihad opened 2017 in arduous style, and Guardiola offered his BBC interrogator the least convincing New Year’s greeting of all time.

“You don't seem that happy that you've won.”

“More than you would believe. More than you would believe, I am happy.”

“You're not showing it.”

“I'm so happy, believe me. I'm so happy. Happy new year.”

That first trophyless season as a manager was rounded off with a relative indignity of a final-day scrap for third place (and automatic passage to the Champions League group stage), a must-win trip to Watford which Guardiola described as “a final, an absolute final.”

It was one of those frequent snippets of Guardiolaspeak from the last three seasons where you can just hear his urgently breathy voice in your head as you read the words. The months in 2013 spent learning German grammar - for up to four hours a day - have left a sharp edge to his accent, which seems to amplify his relentless earnestness even more.

And that’s just on a good day. When, in the bowels of Wembley on Saturday, Guardiola was unexpectedly asked if he had received separate payments from Abu Dhabi during his time with City, his voice almost became a weapon: “Honestly, do you think I deserve this kind of question...on the day I won the treble?”

Such an intense reaction perhaps shouldn’t have been a surprise from a man who spends the last few minutes before every kick-off sat on his bench, alone but for his apparently many thoughts. No manager in history has witnessed his team score 312 goals across two seasons and yet still have his head in his hands so often, a ratio which came to a near parodic climax with City’s sixth goal in the FA Cup final.

To call Guardiola’s fast-twitch mannerisms “excitable” feels insufficient. At the final whistle of a home draw with Everton early last season, he leapt out of his technical area, only to remember his managerial handshake duties, race over to old friend Ronald Koeman, sprint back towards the pitch and his players, before suddenly turning back towards his bench one more.

While such episodes feel like instinctive outpourings of footballing energy, Guardiola certainly has his more performative moments of obsessiveness. Last season’s startling on-pitch confrontation of Southampton’s Nathan Redmond - which turned out to be, in the player’s own words, “passionate, intense and aggressive...but only very complimentary” - was surely one constructive-feedback session too far, and Guardiola admitted he struggles to control himself.

Then, as the FA Cup made its way round Wembley on Saturday, City's almost-hat-trick-hero Raheem Sterling (one of Guardiola’s finest personal micro-management projects) received another of those semi-public debriefs, the familiar blizzard of hand gestures apparently reserved exclusively for young, pacy, English wide forwards.

It is this barely sustainable state of sporting arousal that sets him apart from the rest. It is easy to imagine Jurgen Klopp, Guardiola’s nearest challenger in both the league table and in work ethic, winding down after a hard season, switching off from football for a few days, having a relaxing chat by the pool about nothing much.

Guardiola? “Now is time to have good dinners, good wine and enjoy this incredible season together. In a few weeks, one month, we will think about [next season]. Now is the time to enjoy.”

For his sake, you hope so.

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