Kevin De Bruyne, a star for Manchester City, hasn’t been performing at his best lately, but Pep Guardiola can bring him there again.
Pep Guardiola deserves a lot of credit for his success as a manager, but he maybe deserves a little bit more.
When we talk about the Manchester City manager, we usually focus on his innovative strategies, his exceptional sense of the game, and the outstanding football that only a select few other managers have been able to match over the past 15 years. But his man-management skills have also proven to be excellent, despite receiving little praise for them.
Guardiola’s critics, who resemble cavemen, will dismiss novel concepts like an inverted full-back or a goalkeeper with passing ability, and they will revel in the fаct that the Catalan “overthinks” and “overcomplicates” matches while ignoring the qualities he possesses that they undoubtedly adore in your more… traditional managers.
When necessary, the Blues’ manager is brutal. Sir Alex Ferguson would be proud of the decision he made earlier this year to let go of a key player who was endangering the team’s cohesion. He has shown himself to be a master at speaking at the appropriate time. After defeating Tottenham, he berated his team for not being good enough, but after losing to them, he fiercely defended them.
If you can’t maintain everyone’s happiness and motivation, you can’t run a club for seven years, especially when you ask so much of the players. Always there are lulls. this particular season. But, Guardiola has proven he can navigate the choppy waters to reach the smoother tides.
Phil Foden is the most prominent instance of late. This season, Foden has encountered a setback for the first time since breаking through as a teenager. Throughout the past five seasons, he has upped his minutes played, goal contributions, and quality, but this season has been different. He had a strong start to the campaign, but his form quickly started to wane.
After the World Cup, he sustained an injury, and Jack Grealish’s and Riyad Mahrez’s performances prevented him from playing a considerable amount of time. It was difficult to imagine how he would return to the starting Eleven, but when the opportunity presented itself, he seized it. Foden has four goals after starting the last three games.
After the win against Newcastle, Guardiola shared an energizing conversation he had with the kid. “You feel you don’t have the confidence to do it and it is normal,” he remarked, recalling conversations he had with Phil throughout the year when he had the ball in his possession and gave it back. “Whatever happens to you, Phil, is definitely what should happen,” I declared. He comes in at the age of 17, trains with us for 10, 15, or 20 minutes, plays for the national team, wins championships in the World Cup and the European Cup, and gets a little bit better each year.
“Then arrives a moment you go down. Okay accept it, the strugglҽ with his ankle, accept it. They are the most important things. Don’t blame the other ones, the opponent or the manager or the club or the mates. Accept I can do better and come back to the principles. Step by step they will be back and now he is scoring goals.”
This is skilled man-management. Rather than criticizing a player for his subpar performances, accept the slump as normal and have faith that it will pass. When Foden wasn’t performing at his best, Guardiola didn’t keep him on the team, but he continually stood up for him because he felt he would improve. which he duly obtained.
There is another player right now who would benefit from receiving the same approach. Despite not being at the top of his game, Kevin De Bruyne is still able to score a goal from 30 yards out and provide pivotal moments in crucial games. His overall play, however, hasn’t exactly been up to his extraordinarily high standards lately.
He doesn’t appear to be making as many informed decisions with the ball and in general passing as he usually does, and he isn’t nearly controlling games the way we’ve come to anticipate. He was replaced by Bernardo Silva, who scored the game-winning second goal and took control of the game against Newcastle, after 65 minutes.
There is no doubt De Bruyne will come back to his best again but, perhaps just like Guardiola did with Foden, a bit of time out of the side could do him the world of good.
