Skip to main content

Trust, stability and breakfast chats: how Guardiola delivered another title | Jamie Jackson

Manchester City are set up to serve their manager and close contact with key club figures is pivotal to his happiness

This is the story of a Manchester City title triumph that is about trust, faith, mutual respect, working in concert and, most of all, excellence. It is a tale of how Pep Guardiola oversaw what those close to the manager view as his team’s finest season, better even than the record-breaking 100-point first title triumph of 2017-18 or last season’s, when he had to reset the side after an insipid 1-1 draw at home to West Brom.

It could not have had Sunyesterday’s happiest of endings without Guardiola’s close relationship with Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the chairman, with whom he speaks before and after every match. Nor without the daily breakfasts at the training campus in an area of the cafeteria across from the players where in attendance are Guardiola, his No 2 Juanma Lillo, the director of football Txiki Begiristain, the CEO Ferran Soriano and Manuel Estiarte, the manager’s closest adviser.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/r0awpVy

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How Rico Lewis helped harden up Manchester City’s treble challenge | Jamie Jackson

Guardiola believes advent of the teenage talent sowed seeds of change that turned his side into champions again Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games. Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford . Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing , 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/h8WjbMX

Wandsworth escape accused says it was ‘foolish’ to jail him with his ‘skill set’

Daniel Khalife, 23, says he absconded because he was ‘terrified’ of being locked up with dangerous offenders A former British soldier has told a jury he did not hand himself in after he escaped from prison because he was “finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was” to imprison someone with his “skill set”. Daniel Khalife, 23, told the court he absconded from Wandsworth prison while on remand because he was “terrified” of being locked up with “serious sex offenders” and “terrorists” who wanted to kill him, and that he did not think his imprisonment would be in the public interest. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vRZHkaw

Bodies of Men: the love story taking on toxic masculinity in a time of war

Nigel Featherstone’s new novel tackles traditional conservatism and patriarchy through an unconventional romance How can you be a man and be anti-war? This is the question that Sydney-born novelist Nigel Featherstone, who is a pacifist, considered while he took up a three-month writing residency in a military library. He set out to discover what happens to very different expressions of masculinity placed under military pressure. “Australia does have a very defined, toxic brand of masculinity,” says the bespectacled Featherstone, seated by the window at his local pub facing the railway station at Goulburn, north of Canberra, while men on stools at the nearby bar sink beers and televisions on the walls screen horse racing results. Continue reading... from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2N8piOc