Ageing revolutionary Guardiola is waging war on his own tactical orthodoxies | Jonathan Liew

"And at this point, we have to acknowledge that Pep Guardiola is one of the principal reasons this kind of possession pornography exists in the first place: a serendipitous consequence of reinventing the game at exactly the moment we could start measuring the ways in which he was reinventing it, and exactly the moment we could beam it around the world in meme-sized fragments."

"The numbers themselves were always largely irrelevant. What mattered was the way in which they were deployed: as a plot device, a form of punctuation, a number in service to the wider narrative. Guardiola teams would beat you once on the pitch and then again in the aftermath, a congregation of clerics and hype men explaining how Pep-ball was not simply more effective but somehow more beautiful, more virtuous, more moral."

Gianluigi Donnarumma receiving more touches than Phil Foden and thirty-three percent possession against Arsenal illustrate a tactical departure from pure possession dominance. Pep Guardiola catalyzed a numbers-driven era by reinventing play at the exact moment advanced metrics and rapid global distribution emerged. Iconic statistical moments—Xavi completing 185 passes, Lewandowski creating 62 goal events, and City’s 102% ball tilt—served as narrative flourishes more than rigid measures. These metrics were used to moralize and aestheticize Guardiola football. As fast breaks increase and passing sequences shorten, controlled possession increasingly functions as a secondary plan rather than the default approach.

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