Forget romance, Messi won't make Man City better

Jonathan Wilson, The Guardian

A fortnight ago, two key storylines emerged from Lisbon. There was the collapse of Barcelona and another premature Manchester City exit. From a narrative point of view, the reunion of Lionel Messi and Pep Guardiola makes perfect sense, a fusion of two current storylines, the rekindling of one of football’s great romances.

There they were, in 2011, Pep and Leo, the genius coach who had changed how the game is played and the genius player with the lightning feet and the extraordinary brain, a collaboration that had created arguably the greatest club side there has ever been. Who dreamed then, as they celebrated on the Wembley pitch after their second European title together, young and hopeful, kings of the world, that it would be a high they would spend the rest of their lives trying to replicate? But age, misfortune and entropy come to us all.

The next season saw José Mourinho’s revenge, domestically. An exhausted Guardiola was unable to respond. There was an incomprehensible Champions League exit to Chelsea, two games in which Barça did almost everything right but failed to convert chances and conceded three times on the counterattack. The template of doom was set.

Messi has won the Champions League once more, in 2015. But Guardiola remains stuck on two titles, behind Bob Paisley and Zinedine Zidane. Semioticians of managerial fashion perhaps saw in Guardiola’s decision to wear a long-sleeved T-shirt under a thin-knit cashmere jumper on a roasting night in Lisbon evidence of his anxiety, an additional layer of protection proving counterproductive as he sweated through both.

As football has become more about regaining than retaining the ball, legitimate questions have begun to be asked about whether Guardiola is any longer at the tactical forefront of the game. Reservations have begun to be expressed about Messi as well. Brilliant as he is – this was the 11th straight season in which he scored 25 or more league goals, quite apart from everything else he does – does he unbalance a side? Why is it that over the past four years or so, both Barcelona and Argentina have begun to fail in similar ways? And can a 33-year-old who runs so little really be worth the best part of £100m a year?

So how better to quell the doubts, what better way for City to complete the project of building Barcelona amid the dark satanic mills, than by reuniting them?

There had been some minor chafing in that final season at Barcelona, a sense that Messi was beginning to weary of Guardiola’s incessant demands, but there is nothing like absence and heartache to sweep away the minor irritations and remind us what we used to have. There could be no better finale to Messi’s club career than for him to complete this one last job, to rekindle the perfect dream he and Guardiola once shared. But for all the bells may be ringing out and calling them together, there is the awkward matter of reality. Football is not – yet – a Netflix series, still less a romcom.

Those quibbles about Messi and Guardiola may still be distant – both remain very near the top of their game – but they are real enough. In 2009-10, Messi regained the ball 2.1 times per game in La Liga. By 2011-12 that was down to 1.2. Since Guardiola left, that figure has never risen above 1.

A comparison with City’s attacking right is revealing. The season before last, the role was shared between Riyad Mahrez, Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling, who averaged 1.4 regains per game (although Bernardo Silva was notably more effective in that regard than Mahrez). Last season, Mahrez played on the right 20 times in the league and averaged 1.3 regains per game, while Bernardo played there 11 times and averaged 1.8. Mahrez’s comparatively low figure is itself revealing, but it is still about two‑thirds more than current Messi.

Perhaps Messi could find new energy with a new challenge but Barcelona are the archetype of the press-and-possess side. If he is not closing people down there it is probably because he is no longer capable of doing so. To accommodate a figure who offers so little in terms of defensive work would require a significant rejig.

Assuming a player who has only ever played for one club is able to settle elsewhere, Messi would of course add to City’s attacking potency. He should be a guarantee of goals. He is arguably the greatest ever dribbler. He sees angles and options long before they reveal themselves to mortals. Whether he played as a false 9 or on the right, he would make City, as he would make any team in the world, a better attacking side. He has a capacity to shift the momentum of games.

But attacking isn’t City’s problem. They were top scorers in the Premier League last season. They scored four or more goals in 11 of their 38 league games. Their problem, increasingly, is without the ball. That is where Jürgen Klopp and the German school have found an advantage. Guardiola knows that, which is why the thought of Lyon’s counterattack prompted such a major tactical adjustment.

Messi will not make City better defensively; quite the reverse. In 2017, Barça went out of the Champions League having conceded four and three in individual knockout games; in 2018, after conceding three; in 2019; four; in 2020, eight. Managers changed, players changed, systems changed, Messi was constant: he is not the solution to a glass jaw, just a finer grade of crystal.

This, anyway, is the first time Guardiola has ever entered a fifth season at a club as manager. Part of his brilliance is his intensity, his relentless drive for improvement and control. Even last summer there were rumblings from within the City camp that he was more demanding than ever before; it’s hard to imagine the disappointments of last season will have made him any more relaxed.

At a time when City’s priority must be resetting their counter-press and reducing their vulnerability to the break, the addition of a brilliant but idiosyncratic attacking talent, however dramatically satisfying, seems a needless complication.