Has Pep Guardiola made football boring?

Welcome to The Athletic FC's YouTube channel, where best-in-class journalism meets video.

The Premier League heavyweight title clash between Pep Guardiola's Manchester City and Mikel Arteta's Arsenal ended in a tense 0-0 draw at the Etihad.

This has fans asking the question: Has Pep Guardiola made football boring?

Joe Devine and Jon Mackenzie are joined by Duncan Alexander, Senior Editor for The Athletic, to investigate what "boringness" even is.

This is The Athletic's Week in Football.

#mancity #premierleague #pepguardiola

------------

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:51 What do we mean by "boring"?
03:27 A history of boring with Pep Guardiola
07:50 What is Positional Play?
10:41 Why are Man City boring?
13:38 Tactical Fouls
17:05 Has football always been boring?
19:42 Will Positional Play make football always be boring?
21:30 Xabi Alonso: Positional Play Rulebreaker
25:25 What about Jurgen Klopp?
27:55 Do you need to win the "Big Games" to win the league?
28:59 Up and Coming Coaches
30:21 Which Premier League team has been fouled the most?
32:18 What's football for?
32:32 Does football need to be entertaining for neutrals?

------------

Follow The Athletic FC:

Listen to The Atheltic Football Podcast:

------------

Music sourced from Epidemic Sound
Additional footage sourced from AP Newsroom

[Archminister]

It’s pretty simple when you think about, pep likes to control and hates unpredictability which makes the game less chaotic and more predictable

[pranaychaturvedi]

Can’t Tifo adopt a “positional play” approach where Joe Devine and the crew end up on a podcast?

[chrisfraser]

The real reason City appear to be boring, is because everyone sits in a deep block against them. As time has gone on, more and more teams are willing (and even built to) sit insanely deep against better teams. There are games where teams barely come out of their own third, much less their own half.

[_Super_Hans_]

Finally Joe Devine is back, the only reason anyone has been hanging onto a subscription to this channel

[SalemMJ]

I’m a simple man, I see Joe Devine I click

[declanfrew]

Much like Guardiola is trying to drive the chaos out of football, The Athletic are trying to drive it out of Joe. Joe will never be defeated

[edmann]

What's boring is everyone trying to play the same way. There is no right and wrong way of playing football. Only the winning and the losing. Thinking you can play Pep's style with Burnley is boring and does not yield results.

[BiggestBirdonMars]

His more concentration on control was cuz he couldnt win the UCL cuz teams kept screwing him over in crazy ways
If youre pep and you get criticized for not winning the UCL you're gonna find a way whatsoever

[MegaTimtheman]

The problem is every team plays the same way now, play out from the back and high press. In the naughties there was a much bigger variety of styles of play which i think made football more interesting

[richTVproduction]

He took the unpredictability out of the game. The very thing that makes football exciting. I can't watch Guardiiolas games since Barca days. He sucks the life out of every game. Just a control freak at the highest level.

[amphiphil]

You completely missed the point in the intro.
The game was not boring because it ended 0-0. The game was boring because neither team took any risk. One team did not take enough risk to get the ball, the other one only cared about not losing the ball.
In a typical 0-0, both teams try to win and score goals but fail to do so. In City vs Arsenal, neither team took the risks necessary to score.

[steyno]

The problem with Man City's tactical fouls and other team's is that they don't often get booked for it

[mura]

risk/direct = entertaining, no risk/safe = boring

[djevo]

I can simplify this for you. Fans don't want to watch football when a team has 80% of the ball, passing the ball side to side. This is why city play more games at 3pm on a Saturday than any other top team. The reason Liverpool v city games aren't boring is klopp adds chaos

[ChaingunCassidy]

I think this is a question that gets asked every time a tactical system is at the peak of its powers, no doubt some team will come along and make new waves with another tactic and the process will start all over again.

[HonestDre]

Entertainment is not entirely lost to Jon

[Lioness_UTV]

God yes. I can't watch City on a consistent basis, I also thinks he has a way of reshaping a players talent like Grealish to fit his style vs allowing those players to havr a little more freedom to express themselves. I understand why and I appreciate the genius of Pep but much prefer to watch Klopp's Liverpool as opponents always get a real chance or more every match.

[drex]

Actually when his city teams were more attacking, they were more vulnerable to counter attacks & hence weren't very successful in the UCL. I'll credit the man Pep says is the most influential manager of the last 20 years:
*_De Zerbi_*
Coz of him top managers are playing 3 or 4 Cbs & we don't see those flying full backs on both sides as much. Watching Brighton without Mitoma is boring af.

[BestBoyPatrick]

I’ve heard absolutely no one try and argue for the merits of that game last week as a spectacle… then up steps Jon Mackenzie

[Zenil]

There is no unpredictability in the way Pep and other tactical coaches train their team. It's very much like making players robotic and trying to make them only certain things. This is an issue occurring in football where tactics seems to dominate the uniqueness and creativity of football