Nothing fascinates in football quite like the inside of Pep Guardiola’s head. And nothing exemplifies the complexity of that head more than what gets chewed, chomped and honed in there until it’s eventually discharged like a bullet. Yes, I’m talking about the Pep spit. And it’s in the Pep spit that we can begin to understand his quest for perfection and its recent unravelling.
Spitting is regarded by many as uncouth. But Pep has elevated the common-or-garden gob into an art form. Sometimes, I find myself watching his great expectorations more closely than the actual football. For it’s in the frequency, globularity and texture of those magnificent balls of spit that he shows himself at his most naked. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, these supreme spheres are atoms of Guardiola. Put enough together in the right order and you eventually get the whole Pep.
Alex Ferguson, Carlo Ancelotti and Sam Allardyce (who reckons he gets through four packs of gum a match) are famous chewers. Pep is also a chewer. But he chews on his own saliva. He cycles it and recycles it like the most extreme form of tiki-taka Pep-ball. As he watches the match from the dugout, a study in arm-flailing, agonised incoherence, it moves from one side of the mouth to the other, behind his molars, past his incisors and canines. Under and over his tongue, and back again. He plays the game on the pitch out in his mouth. The only difference is instead of settling for 70%, this is 100% spitball possession.
Eventually it emerges in the tiniest perfectly formed ball. It defies (or maybe defines) physics. It’s heavier than spit has the right to be, hitting the ground more like hailstone than regular spit. This is, of course, just the end product – the Erling Haaland finish after all the tireless probing.
My friend BriceyG thinks that Pep has somebody on staff who collects all his balls of spit from the dugout at the end of the game, and freezes them ready for the next match. But I know that’s not true because each spitball is its own unique oral sculpture. Like his football, it’s a paradox – a product of endless mechanical repetition and a singular expression of artistry. Whereas mere mortals gob gracelessly or send flecks in myriad directions, Pep spits glutinous balls of exactly the same dimensions time and again (frankly, they look nutritious and rather yummy). If it wasn’t for their individualised beauty, these liquid baubles could come straight off a conveyor belt.
Astonishingly, Pep’s spitting appears to be subconscious. He has never given the slightest hint that he is aware he has a hoicking habit. If he were to be asked about it, I’m sure he’d simply say it’s untrue. And he’d mean it. Such is the man’s genius intensity that he’s oblivious to corporeal matters like flobbing his way through a football match.
Pep is a coach like no other. His football, like his brain and his sputum, is based on the most intricate, geometric computations. (That’s why many people find it boring.) It’s precision engineering applied to team sport. And when it goes wrong, as we have seen in recent weeks, it goes super-wrong. It feels unfixable.
For Pep, football is not simply going on to the pitch and beating the opposition. It’s dividing said pitch into 20 zones – four horizontal and five vertical, and triumphing pretty much in every one of them, simply to win a game. (When he’s playing spitball during a match, I imagine he similarly divides his mouth into 20 horizontal and vertical zones.)
While regular managers who are struggling reach for traditional solutions – say a nippy winger up front, or a holding player to shore up the defence – with Pep, nothing’s so simple. The entire system breaks down. So a 32-match unbeaten run in the league is followed by four successive defeats. Computer says no. A team that have won four successive Premier League titles, and six in total under Pep in eight years, largely by keeping possession of the ball, becomes terrified of the ball. Hoof. And hoof again.
Yes there have been injuries – notably to Rodri and Kevin De Bruyne, arguably the two greatest midfielders of their generation. The squad has also become older and smaller, and it’s not surprising if they’re a bit knackered after all the Guardiola-inspired achievements (an unprecedented domestic clean sweep – the quadruple; the second team to achieve the treble of league title, FA Cup and Champions League; the only club to win 100 points in a Premier League season, and on it goes). There are obvious failings. City have stopped pressing like hyperactive ants and the overload is not working as it used to. But there’s more to it than that. Over a lifetime’s watching football, I have never seen a coach’s catastrophic breakdown expressed on the pitch so eloquently and desperately by the players.
This has been a collapse second to none. Total disintegration. The Patek Philippe of football clubs has simply stopped working. As for the spitball that seems to be struggling too. Pep has been overthinking it. Not masticating with his normal ease. At times, the mouth appears too dry. The saliva is simply not there. The rhythm’s gone. And when the bullets are discharged, they lack the normal pace, direction and fluidity. Pep’s mouth has been in crisis every bit as much as his team has.
But beware. He has always found a solution. And on Sunday there were signs. A 2-0 win at Leicester with only 46.4% of the possession. A new start? And after Erling scored the second, I’m sure I saw Pep unleash a fully powered, pristine gobbet of spit. He’s back.
