Manchester City Football Club, Pep Guardiola and Me
I wanted to write about this topic for a long time. I had decided specific milestone for writing this. When the milestone was surpassed few days ago when Manchester City Football Club (MCFC) won Champion’s League.
I have been watching Premier League (PL) since 2018. After watching the football world cup, I was wondering why I haven’t yet seen any football league matches till now. So, I started watching PL matches and started liking it.
I have been a sports fan since child hood. Although, I haven’t played any professional sport except casually playing cricket, badminton, and table tennis a little bit. In childhood I used to watch cricket, tennis and other such sports on TV. When cable TV first came to India around 1994, I started watching new sports like golf, Formula 1, speed boat racing and so on.
When I started watching PL, I watched games of any team. Then I observed one specific team plays very differently than all other and it was previous year’s champion MCFC. Then I started watching their matches. What I liked about MCFC was how they keep possession of the ball more compared to other teams, how the goal keeper doesn’t clear the ball by kicking hard but and passes to the nearby defender. How a MCFC player when loses the ball to the opponent hurriedly tries to regain it. I also saw the limitations of the team like how they were not good at counter attacks, and faced some extreme defeats, and so on. I am not a football expert but these are my observations.
Now you must be thinking, it is very easy to like the team that was already a champion but believe me, I really liked how they played. When Liverpool became PL champions and won Champion League I did not like their playing style. I can’t spell out what exactly I didn’t like though.
To better understand MCFC, I started learning more about the team, about their manager/coach – Pep Guardiola. I learned how he had earlier transformed Bayern Munich and Barcelona football teams. What was his style as a player in Barcelona team. I came to know about as a player he learned a lot from Johan Cruyff. I listened to and read few of books about Pep Guardiola. Then I understood his philosophy about keeping possession of the ball and other such things.
While watching any sports, when you start following a particular team or a player, you always want them to win. There are ups and downs. Then there are commentators. When I used to follow cricket, whenever a commentator praised a particular player or a team, they either started playing badly or got out many times. So, I started watching football matches by turning the speaker mute. Al though I will prefer watching football or any other sport objectively, that is without favouring any team or a player, in reality that never happens. One of my friends used to watch cricket objectively and I really admired him for that, I haven’t come across anybody like him.
Whenever I watch MCFC playing, I draw many management or business lessons though I don’t want you to bore you with those. But I prefer sharing the lessons learned through my workshops and don’t want to ramble about it here.
I can’t complete writing about MCFC without mentioning my favourite player – Kevin De Bruyne. Pep Guardiola transformed this player. I think Kevin De Bruyne is extension of how Pep Guardiola used to play. Kevin De Bruyne is never satisfied with his performance and always want to do more, play more. Like an innocent child, you can see his anger, frustration.
I want to write more on this topic but can’t because there is so much to write that I am overwhelmed. I also used to follow one TV show which reviews PL. This show mentioned couple of tweets I had posted. You can check one of those here https://twitter.com/sachinbhide/status/1394674943481192452
I know that I will get to work on something related to football but when I don’t to know. Let me know your thoughts on what I have expressed. Neither I am a football player nor an expert in that. So, if I have made any mistake while expressing my thoughts, please forgive me.
Regards,
Sachin
Sachin