As Pep Guardiola prepares to take Manchester City into the cauldron of Anfield for Sunday’s showdown with Liverpool, he exudes a characteristic first witnessed towards the end of last season: serenity. Intensity has been superseded by a manager at ease – with his team and himself.
This new geniality appeared in May when City beat Paris Saint-Germain in their semi to reach a first Champions League final. When Guardiola’s third Premier League title was secured with three games to spare, it deepened. Come the next season and fresh travails, it was easy to assume Guardiola would return to his more recognisable persona.
But after Tuesday’s 2-0 loss at PSG the City manager was again in genial mode when professing contentment at his team’s display.
Preparing for Sunday’s trip to a venue where last term’s 4-1 victory over Liverpool was a first City win in 18 years and asked if emotions are acute before such a high-stakes encounter, Guardiola says: “Absolutely I enjoy them – all those feelings have to be there: excitement, nervous, pressure, all those emotions, yes. If you don’t have it for the big important games, then it shows that this business is not for you.
“Maybe you sleep not so well the day before and well after – if the result or performance has not been good. [But] you can’t go there like you’re going to the restaurant with friends because then it’s not for you. I still have nerves before the game, wondering if the plan will go good – if you don’t get this you are in the wrong business. You have to feel [this].”
Guardiola is similarly unruffled about City’s challenge of facing a Jürgen Klopp team that lead City by a point in the Premier League, and who will tear at the champions with a raucous Anfield roaring them on. “They won the Champions League and the Premier League [under Klopp] – and all the time they are playing and competing,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what happens, it doesn’t matter which competition. They play with high intensity in all senses, they are a typical Jürgen team, a fantastic team.
“I admire Jürgen for that – they try to play their game whatever. He knows that we are the same. It doesn’t matter what happens, we have a go. Mistakes, weak points, it doesn’t matter. We are who we are as a team – Manchester City are a team that’s going to go this way. If it’s going well, great. If it’s going badly, improve. I don’t know another way to do it. We did it last year, it worked. So we are going to try and do it again.”
City boast 14 different scorers this season , the perfect riposte to those who view the failure to land Harry Kane in the close season as a strategic blunder. Guardiola jokes when asked: what if the goals dry up?
“What will be the plan B? Buy two strikers for £250m?” he says. “No. We [will] have to play better, [load] more people in the box. The biggest strikers in the world score because they are in front of the goal – there are no secrets to this. So once we are there [in position] we have to have the quality to put it in the back of the net.
“It is impossible to score if you are not close, it’s a question of mathematics [numbers near goal], for sure. And that’s what we have to do – make the process so we arrive there, then try to finish in front of the goal.”
Guardiola remains calm even when he is reminded of City’s coach being attacked at Anfield three years ago. “You cannot imagine how bad it was,” he says. “I wish it would never happen again.”
The smart money says Guardiola’s nerves will fray at some point but there seems a fresh sense of self-possession that cannot be shaken, and which is a sweet augury for City’s campaign.