FC Bayern Forum

[#12]

Okay... We will never know though... (sadly - or luckily, whichever way it would have turned out )

True - we're talking about a high level/standard/measure here... It's just that there are as many overpraisers as overcriticizers... And each one claims the other one was there first
While I was mostly and for a long time on the critics' side (and I will remain being critical), I'm trying to make the case for a more balanced approach towards evaluating his work... Many things he does are great - and were so in the past as well (e.g. that IMHO he has the ability to make the players follow him no questions asked matter what and that they actually play for him) - but he also fucked up stuff...
Also there can never be a perfect coach... I for one would love one who has Jupps way of dealing with players and co-workers, van Gaals eye and nose for finding and developing talent, Guardiola's motivation and thoroughness, Ottmars attitude towards the press and lots of his character, and a mixture of Ottmars and Guardiolas flexibility and versatility... Guardiola is - and there can be no doubt about it IMHO - the best coach for Bayern at the moment...

[quaazi]

I wish people criticized Pep about things he's actually done wrong - occasionaly faulty man management, for example (read: the 4-0 fiasco, centering play around Kroos without making it clear financially how much he needed him, the failed transfer of Pepe Reina). It'd make for actually constructive dialogue instead of the consistenly backwards crap we have to put up with.

[quaazi]

Guardiola is - and there can be no doubt about it IMHO - the best coach for Bayern at the moment...

That's quite nice of you to admit!

[#12]

Well, how can you blame him for Reina? He's not in charge of transfers... Also, he wanted to keep Kroos, and while I was tempted to blame him at first as well, there's certain rules at Bayern for when anybody deserves to be one of the top earners, and they didn't want to break those...
Also, I still think that Kroos - besides being a solid player - is a little overrated...

[#12]

That's quite nice of you to admit!

I think I never said anything else, did I? Doesn't mean that you cannot say this and that is/was shit, right?
You should have seen me with Jupp... It's not like Guardiola is the first coach I ever criticized...
(But I was really sad when he left, and back then I thought that HE was the best fit... Doesn't get any younger though...)

[albanian7]

By the way, I just found this from Perarnau's book (re-reading it on PDF). It's the Audi Cup, the Manchester match

“The Munich team rally and in the end win the final 2-1 playing completely differently from the first half. Their football bears no resemblance to what Guardiola wants. They go for lots of long, diagonal balls to the wings, crosses into the box and headed chances on goal. For the first time Pep doesn’t seem terribly bothered by his players employing a different style from his own.”

.

[#12]

The book dates back a few seasons, doesn't it albanian7? When was that?

[albanian7]

The book dates back a few seasons, doesn't it albanian7? When was that?

The match takes place in August 2013. I found it funny since we've spent the past weeks in this forum talking about long balls to the wings, crosses, headers, etc

[tflags]

The book dates back a few seasons, doesn't it albanian7? When was that?

The match takes place in August 2013. I found it funny since we've spent the past weeks in this forum talking about long balls to the wings, crosses, headers, etc

It's funny how some people simply don't get it.

When Guardiola arrived in Munich he most probably had spent the previous six months learning German, eating pretzels and, more importantly, wathcing GolTV in New York. During his first press conferences he described, in what he openly thought was German football most important characteristic, counter attacking. He called Germany 'Counterland'.

At least that was what he could openly say about German tactics before giving away too much of his thinking.

The thing is it bares some truth in it. Dortmund had been a devastatingly impressive team in those previous two years by picking 6 people above the back four and telling them where to press. Once they got the ball back, they were the fastest team on earth to transit it to the oppositions' area. Hell, they even had a training machine (footbonaut they called it) commissioned for that purpose.

In such form you had to be extremely lucky not to concede a goal or two against them until they ran out of gas for an hour or so of sprinting (2013 CL final anyone?) Pundits used to joke that in order to beat Dortmund all you had to do was sit back, relax for an hour, and then walk to score. That joke proved to be true in more than one final.

Guardiola had a different style. And everyone knew that. For all the benefits his passing game brought to the pitch, sooner or later Klopp, Weinzert of Favre were going to dispossess him of the ball and run their way to a win. It was also quite obvious and widely covered tiki-taka was upon Bayern. Everyone expected Bayern to be a Barca; employ the same tactics, copy them to the shoes and laces. Guardiola was happy to oblige, in theory.

The thing is Guardiola's Barcelona was quite aware of pressing. La Masia's training was based on it. You had to have the ball; no questions asked. They trained in a way in which when you lost a pass, you had five seconds to enlist your nearest teammate and run-to-recover it or go back to your zone. They had it so perfected in Guardiola's team they reached two seconds and three-men pressing groups at their peak. It was fantastic to watch. This is why I once wrote here Barcelona's 2011 team vs Dortmund's was a match football history never gave us and will be one of the sports great lost treasures.

Back on the pitch people tend to be dumb. It is human nature to put what you don't know or understand in a four square box and brand it one colored and Guardiola was happy to let everyone think they were tiki-taking their way to the title. The thing is Guardiola indentified his more important challengers and let Dortmund & co take poblate midfield-after all, he did announce he was in love with midfielders- while in reality he bombarded the flanks and strikers with long balls. These pictures, from 2013:




It was quite funny he once had his tactics appeared on Bild before the game vs Dortmund. Bild ran a now famous article describing how Bayern were going to long ball their game and Guardiola got furious, called for the mole's head and threatened to fire him. At the end there was no mole, only a handful of reporters on a hill watching the supposedly secret training and learning all the team did was make long balls to the strikers or then wings. Curtains got raised. No heads rolled.

Back in Dortmund the game got so frustrating (after Bayern won 0-3) Klopp/The Guardian had this to say:

It was also extremely strange to see a Pep Guardiola pumping long balls forward in the first half. Klopp counted "more long balls than in the last three years combined"from the opposition but also recognized the thinking behind the tactic - tactics Guardiola was concerned had been leaked by a mole. "They wanted to play around our counter-pressing, our biggest strength," the Dortmund manager explained; "... first you work us with long balls and then you bring on the 1.70m boys."

The tactics used by Guardiola last week were nothing new. He's been beating Dortmund with the same type of play since he arrived. There's no adaptation, no new concept, only new players and the rest of them more adapted to his ideas.

So to Albanian7, #12, RedQueen and all the people who keep insisting Pep has aligned to his players and he's adapting to them I'd like to say this: Stop writing BS. Read a little, inform yourselves, make informed opinions. You are watching something extremely interesting going on but your hurt pride is so far up your asses your eyes are blocked.

In short, stop writing BS; it is getting boring.

[quaazi]

That was a fun game, I believe it was the one with Martinez as a CAM?

[nm462272]

tflags

[#12]

There's no adaptation, no new concept, only new players and the rest of them more adapted to his ideas.

So to Albanian7, #12, RedQueen and all the people who keep insisting Pep has aligned to his players and he's adapting to them I'd like to say this: Stop writing BS. Read a little, inform yourselves, make informed opinions. You are watching something extremely interesting going on but your hurt pride is so far up your asses your eyes are blocked.

I still do...
And I am not just talking about long balls... Not just about the Dortmund game in particular... You do know there's 16 other teams in Bundesliga, right?
The kind of wingplay we have right now, the focus on one - or even two - strikers - that IS unprecedented - and not exclusively with Guardiola by the way... And you can read all you want, insist on Lewandowski or Mandzu making the majority of games (true!) and patronize all you want: that's a fact...
Also, I have no reason whatsoever to feel my pride hurt... Even though I'm quite satisifies with what currently happens in Munich, the fact remains that he got his ass kicked twice by an inferior RM... And the fact that also remains is that all of it is worth shit if he fails to preserve this and carry it through the Rückrunde once again
By the way: Adapting to your players strenghts is a positive thing for a coach, not a negative thing - so claiming that he's not doing it is not actaully making a good case for him...

[tflags]

That was a fun game, I believe it was the one with Martinez as a CAM?

It was. And that, in itself, is a completely new topic which deserves its own thread. And while Martinez as a CAM vs Dortmund failed miserably (The Guardian ended up calling Martinez "the destroyer" as he was so effective destroying everything in his wake he not only destroyed the opposition plays but also his own) Del Bosque later used him in the same fashion for the NT. He never played there again.

But while Martinez as 'the false 10' failed miserably, the "inverted DM", "false 10" and more recently "inverted rhombus" idea has paid off immensely everywhere else. It has even taken an extreme form: I still have nightmares waking up in the middle of the night thinking I'm Scolari and Kroos and Khedira keep pressing Dante and Luiz on their start of play on that nightmarish 1-7 trashing in Rio.

[ramsej84]

3-4-1-2

[#12]

Please, no!