The world of soccer throws up no shortage of questions. Today, Graham Ruthven endeavors to answer three of them
Pep Guardiola has done a lot with his 1,000 matches as a manager. At Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, he has lifted 40 trophies (including three Community Shields, because why wouldn’t you count them?), yet not even this fact quantifies the way Guardiola has defined an entire era (or two) of the sport.
And he’s working on setting the zeitgeist again. In his 1,000th match in the dugout on Sunday, Guardiola watched his City side dismantle Liverpool in a way that suggests the 54-year-old’s next great team is in the pipeline.
While so many of soccer’s best teams in 2025 are all about the press, Guardiola wants his Manchester City team to find solutions with the ball. Against Liverpool, he fielded three natural creators (Rayan Cherki, Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva) to play through the middle with Jérémy Doku also tucked inside to overload the centre and dribble to his heart’s content. The Premier League champions couldn’t cope.
As if that wasn’t enough for Liverpool to handle, Nico O’Reilly was given the freedom to get forward and take up positions that twisted Liverpool’s Conor Bradley into a knot while Erling Haaland did Erling Haaland things. Even without Rodri, City had full control of the game in the centre of the pitch. It was a complete performance.
