Ca team be too perfect? Could it be that if you have technically brilliant players at every position who have completely assimilated into a cleverly intelligent system, the result is not a ruthless winning machine but a slightly cold entity so obsessed with order that when the interruption comes it is unable to to face it?
Following last season elimination from the Champions League against Real MadridPep Guardiola dismissed suggestions that his team couldn’t handle adversity, that the crisis might drive its sophisticated mechanics crazy. But it is at least intriguing that City’s two most high-profile recent signings, Jack Grealish Y Erling Halandthey are disruptors who don’t seem to fit naturally into their precisely ordered universe.
As City seek to achieve five Premier League titles in six seasons, a level of dominance in English football achieved only twice before, by Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United between 1995-96 and 2000-01 and Liverpool’s run of 1978-79 to 1983-84. Haaland is the most significant signing this summer. However, his arrival is part of a larger picture of the main rivals adjusting their attacking options. Of the Big Six, only Manchester United have yet to sign a striker, but the saga of cristiano ronaldo could result in a major change to your front line.
Haaland is a risk. He is clearly a footballer with amazing potential, one of those hulking strikers who appear infrequently and who, for a while, make the game look ridiculously simple. He has scored 78 league goals in the last three seasons; he himself has spoken of looking at City and imagining how many goals he would score like the one he scored 12 minutes into his first appearance for the club, a friendly against Bayern, finishing off a low cross from close range. But what matters for City is less whether he hits 30 or 40 during the campaign than whether he can be ruthless in the big Champions League games where they fall short.
His rough edges, his idiosyncrasies, may be what allows him to do that, decoupling him from the City system, making his attacking game less predictable. (Are they predictable, and if they are, is that a problem? Even that is not apparent.) City have a clear pattern – there is an obvious type of City goal, the low cut for an oncoming player – but that works in almost all circumstances, which is why he has been top scorer in each of the last five league seasons. The problem is that the circumstance where it might not work is against the best teams in the biggest games, and by definition there are very few of them, which means the data set is necessarily small.
But those rough edges, his bullish self-assurance, may be what creates friction. Haaland has been open about admiring him for Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who lasted only one bitter season with Guardiola in Barcelona and poked fun at the “obedient little schoolboys” who made up the rest of the team. Haaland’s goal against Bayern was scored by Grealish and he spoke after that game about how he liked the “vibes” from him.
Grealish, it seemed, was signed to add a bit of anarchy to the clean pace of the front line, a balancing act he admitted he had found difficult; his interview on the last day in which he spoke of how inhibited he was at times by the demands of the system was as revealing as anything about the compromises Guardiola’s methods demanded. Perhaps the two can add improvisation that lifts City to greater heights, but it’s a risk.
The remodeling of Liverpool’s forward line had been anticipated for some time. Liverpool have been very efficient in recent years identifying targets early and evolving without much fuss but the loss of Sadio Mane Y the incorporation of Darwin Núñez to a front of three that only saw the arrival of Luis DÃaz in January inevitably means uncertainty. However, Diaz was felt to have assimilated quickly but was ineffective in the Champions League final, and there must be concerns about the way Mané’s move into the center seemed to affect Mohamed Salah’s form in the second. half of last season.
The great Soviet-era coach Valeriy Lobanovskyi observed that, at the highest level, the links between players are at least as important as the players themselves; Finding a trio whose chemistry has had such a beneficial impact on both parties is extremely difficult. It may be that Salah, Núñez, DÃaz is even older than Salah, Roberto Firmino, Mané, but it may not.
It may be a necessary part of his development, but Chelsea appear to have taken a step back from last season. Adding Raheem Sterling and offloading Romelu Lukaku changes the dynamic of the attack, but Chelsea want to add another striker. The fact that Todd Boehly has been doing the job of sporting director may not have helped in the recruitment, but the fact that Barcelona, ​​a club with no money, repeatedly blow him away is an admittedly harsh lesson in the economy. chimera of modern football.
In adding RicharlisonTottenham have added depth and variety and should have taken some of the pressure off Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, while gabriel jesus seems a more natural fit for Mikel Arteta’s plans at Arsenal than Alexandre Lacazette, even if questions remain about his completion.
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And then there’s Ronaldo, the albatross United gleefully tied around their necks last season and who, despite their best efforts, seem incapable of losing. He doesn’t fit, can’t fit into Erik ten Hag’s system, and if he somehow stays at the club, particularly given all the stories about his attitude to pressing drills in training last season, it’s hard to see how he wouldn’t be a disruptive presence. .
The contenders will be the same as always: City or possibly Liverpool they are likely to be champions and the battle for Champions League qualification will surely be between the six familiar teams. But in the readjustment of the front lines there is an element of danger and it is in that uncertainty that the initial fascination of this season’s title race lies.