![]() At last we can have a look inside the box and observe the genius! To be frank, this explains the majority of my excitement too before I had even ripped off the excessive Amazon packaging and started reading the book.Įxcept, fatally, the lack of actual genius is astonishing by virtue of its absence throughout this book. So why has Perenau’s book been serenaded with so much praise and reverence since the time it was published? The answer is simple: the myth of Pep Guardiola is so entrenched in the modern footballing world that any attempt to open up the enigma and understanding the working of this man is met with an almost palpable relief, particularly by the media community (see also the volcanic response to the recent Amazon documentary of Manchester City’s Premier League title winning season under Pep last year). To be completely honest, the narrative structure of the book as it chronologically runs through the season is also frequently boring, something I notice other reviewers have also observed. To say Perarnau’s book has not aged well is an understatement for this reason. Perarnau is far too much of a sycophant to admit it, but the only reason Bayern hired Pep was to win them the Champions League. Primarily, this is because close observers of Pep’s career will note that not only did he fail to win the Champions League (the pinnacle of world club football) in his first season at Bayern, but he failed to win it in any of his 3 seasons there - and even more significantly, he was knocked out each time in very embarrassing fashion, for both himself and his team (similar could be said of his next 2 seasons at Manchester City too). In many respects, this book is doomed to fail before it even begins. Expectations were much higher and therefore a sense of abject failure at the end of Pep’s first season looms very large, particularly in the final quarter of the book. Yes, Bayern won the Bundesliga league and German Cup double in this 2013-14 season, but as the biggest club in Germany, with by far the best squad and coming off a treble-winning season under the previous manager Jupp Heynckes, this was practically a fait accompli on day 1. To completely misquote Winston Churchill in a completely unrelated context, never have so many words been given to so few actual achievements in Guardiola’s first season as Bayern Munich manager (the sole period this biography chronicles). ![]() Pep Guardiola’s managerial record is, by any measure, astounding.ģ La Ligas, 2 Copa Del Reys, 3 Spanish Super Cups, 2 Champions Leagues, 3 European Super Cups, 3 FIFA World Club Cups, 3 Bundesligas, 2 German Cups, 1 Premier League, 1 EFL Cup and 1 Community Shield - all within the space of 10 years.Īnd yet somehow, in a way I still find utterly bizarre, Marti Perarnau’s most astonishing feat as author of this biography of Pep Guardiola is to actually leave the more astute reader with a significantly lesser opinion of the man commonly thought of as “the best manager in world football”. ![]()
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