Rodgers out to stop Guardiola’s juggernaut

Irishman admires Spaniard’s footballing philosophy as both speak of mutual respect


Afp September 28, 2016
Guardiola juggles the ball as he takes a team training session at the Manchester City Football Academy Campus ahead of their Champions League clash against Celtic. PHOTO: AFP

LONDON: In Celtic’s Champions League clash with Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City tonight, Brendan Rodgers will pit his wits against a man who has had a defining influence on his career.

Whether with Swansea City, Liverpool or Celtic, Rodgers has sought to emulate the kind of passing football with which Guardiola took first Barcelona and then Bayern Munich to the summits of the game.

“I’ve admired him from the outside looking in, at the courage he has showed to play the modern game,” Rodgers told Spanish sports newspaper AS in 2014. “His love and passion [for] football, his great principles and ideas and the confidence he gives to people.”

Jose Mourinho gave Rodgers his first big leg-up in professional football, inviting the Northern Irishman, then working in the academy at Reading, to join him at Chelsea in 2004.

But it is Guardiola, Mourinho’s nemesis, whose example Rodgers has always strived to follow and it was in Guardiola’s native Spain that his ideas about how to play the game took shape.

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Rodgers, 43, is an exponent of the joined-up coaching philosophy practised by clubs like Barcelona, where youth players are taught to play in the same possession-focused way as the first team.

The Spanish influence was apparent at both Swansea and Liverpool. Luis Suarez, the former Liverpool striker, says Rodgers spoke to him in Spanish when they first met and the Uruguay international appreciated the Spanish touches in Rodgers’s approach.

Rodgers’s commitment to passing football has not gone unnoticed by Guardiola.

“I don’t think there is any doubt about Brendan’s quality,” the City manager said last month. “He was closer than anyone in the last 25 years to winning the Premier League at Liverpool and he has a lot of experience.”

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Guardiola, 45, has been praised for revitalising Raheem Sterling this season, but the England winger also remains grateful for the guidance he was given by Rodgers during their three years at Liverpool.

“He was massive for me,” Sterling said this week. “Every manager that I’ve worked with, I’ve tried to learn as much as I can, and he’s one that I definitely learnt a lot off. Playing me in different positions, making me understand the roles and maturing in certain systems. He gave me a lot of confidence as well.”

Looking to rebuild his reputation at Celtic after being sacked by Liverpool a year ago, Rodgers saw his new side dealt a humiliating 7-0 defeat by Barcelona on their opening Group C outing.

At Glasgow’s Celtic Park on Wednesday, against the man who laid the foundations for the present-day Barcelona, Rodgers has another chance to prove all those years of Spanish homework were not in vain.

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Walcott revival gives Arsenal Euro boost

Out of favour with Arsenal and exiled by England, Theo Walcott reached a crossroads at the end of last season and his emphatic response looks to have saved a career in danger of imploding.

Walcott started only one of Arsenal’s final 14 matches last term and lost his place in Roy Hodgson’s England squad at the end of a miserable campaign that appeared to shatter the winger’s dreams of ever cementing himself as a key figure for club or country.

Now, just months later, ahead of tonight’s clash against Swiss side Basel, he has re-established himself as one of Arsenal’s main men thanks to a desperate close-season bid for redemption.

“I always felt there is character and intelligence in this boy,” said Wenger. “What was a big blow for him was not to go to the Euros. He is a guy with a good assessment of his performances and qualities. He is 27, a very important age. I said many times at the start of the season that we would see a different Walcott. I could see he made a decision and stuck to it.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28th, 2016.

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