OFFSIDE | Why Sir Alex Ferguson vs Pep Guardiola is no longer a debate

The allegations against Man City leave no doubt as to who was the better manager. Hello and welcome to another edition of Offside.One of the side effects of democracy is that people have too many silly opinions that they feel the need to air, including questioning gospel truths by questioning whether Babar Azam can be compared to Sachin Tendulkar, or whether Hyderabadi biryani is a better tasting proposition than Kolkata biryani. To quote a Pakistani viral guy: fear God. Yet some even have the audacity to blasphemously suggest that Pep Guardiola is a better manager than Sir Alex Ferguson. Somehow they believe that a man who managed clubs with transfer-only budgets that could be the GDP of a nation is comparable to Ferguson’s footballing legacy.Can you imagine Guardiola taking a club like Aberdeen, breaking the hegemony of the old firm and then going to the Cup Winners’ Cup to beat Real Madrid with an Aberdeen team? Or taking a relegation-threatened team known for being more of a social club than a football club and turning them into perennial winners with a force of personality that held a huge club together despite huge debt, only for the club to immediately collapse when he left?This is not to say that Guardiola is a bad football coach. He is a genius who understood the geometry of football better than anyone, but he did it with clubs like Barcelona, ​​Bayern Munich and Manchester City spending the league budget on full-backs.Perhaps it’s the timing that makes the terms of the debate even more hollow.As Guardiola’s City legacy is cast in the shadow of the independent commission’s findings, Ferguson’s new book is upon us: Games of my life.The book is based on 21 matches from a football career that spanned 69 years as a player and manager, included more than 2,800 official matches, and did not even surpass the 1999 Champions League final.As Ferguson said, in a line that really explains the difference between a manager and a coach, the games that stuck with him were often more about the people than the games.It will be a fascinating follow-up to Ferguson’s older books and may explain how an apprentice toolmaker from Govan whose certificate listed his skills as “milling, shaping, grooving, turning and all forms of grinding” was able to use those skills to create dynasty after dynasty of football legends.Ferguson’s true genius was never drawing darts on a board. Before becoming a benevolent red-nosed dictator at United, he was a union steward who went on strike and took his apprentices with him because he believed it was his duty to the group.A few years later it was the same system, except the apprentices were multi-millionaire footballers and industrial action was knocking Liverpool off their damn perch.Ferguson often used Lunch on top of a skyscraper — the famous image of construction workers riding calmly hundreds of feet above Manhattan — to tell young football players that if these men weren’t afraid to fall, then maybe they shouldn’t be afraid to go into battle.

Ferguson often used this image to draw attention to his charges.

You’ll hear someone talk about him and you’ll feel like brick walls and mountains would pass for Ferguson. Perhaps even Guardiola evokes this kind of loyalty.Lionel Messi was once the talk of English football: but can he do it on a cold, rainy night in Stoke? Could his mentor Pep Guardiola ever do that on a cold night in Aberdeen? It’s a big what if for a man who has only managed Barcelona, ​​with some of the most talented footballers in the world and the best to ever play the game; Bayern Munich, where even a kitman can win the league; and Manchester City, whose books, the Premier League commission found, were so cooked that it now looks like a Breaking Bad continuation.Take away the footballers City could bring in for Guardiola and wonder if those trophies will still be there. On the other hand, Ferguson won league titles with Tom Cleverley, Darron Gibson and Anderson.Almost the same team that Ferguson won the league with finished seventh a year later under David Moyes. In the Fergie era, finishing second was considered an abject failure. After Fergie it was the peak.But Guardiola’s performance at City, where he also won the Treble, opened the door to debate and perhaps, looking at the piece of paper, there is an argument to be made. In ten years at City, he won the league six times and a total of 17 major trophies, excluding the Community Shields. In 27 years, Ferguson won only 28 major trophies, excluding the Charity Shields.But Guardiola took over a team that had won two Premier League titles in the previous five seasons, reached the semi-finals of the Champions League the season before his arrival, and included Sergio Agüero, Kevin De Bruyne, David Silva, Fernandinho, Vincent Kompany and Raheem Sterling.Not exactly in Aberdeen.And then consider the money.Depending on how transfer fees and add-ons are calculated, City have spent roughly £2bn during Guardiola’s decade. Fergie also broke British transfer records, but during Ferguson’s last eight seasons under the Glazers United spent £343m gross on players and only around £153m net, while nearly £496m left the club in interest. Ferguson still won five Premier League titles during those eight seasons.And then we get to FFP, which leaves a real asterisk hanging over Guardiola’s City legacy.We now know that the Premier League’s independent commission found that City had inflated revenue and hidden costs between 2009-10 and 2017-18, with a financial distortion of more than £900m. This period included a season in which Guardiola’s City finished with 100 points.So on the one hand you have a manager working under severe financial constraints caused by Glazer’s buyout of Manchester United. Ferguson has never been very candid about his time under the Glazers, rejecting calls from rock fans for him to step down and insisting he has to be there for the club.Contrast that with Guardiola, who left before the verdict was handed down.He then wrote: “I want every Manchester City fan around the world to know I’m here; more than ever.”Except he wasn’t. He’s already gone.A similar shadow hangs over Guardiola’s tenure at Barcelona over the Negreira affair, in which Barcelona paid more than €7.3m over 17 years to companies linked to José María Enríquez Negreira, then vice-president of Spain’s Referees Commission. Barcelona say the money was for technical reports on referees and there is no evidence that referees were paid to fix matches. Unfortunately for Pepa, his entire Barcelona reign fell on the payday.And then history decides to provide a joke that the screenwriter would reject because it’s too obvious.Many years ago, Guardiola’s mentor Johan Cruyff told Ferguson: “You will never win the European Cup.”Ferguson asked, “Why?”Cruyff replied: “You don’t cheat and buy referees.”Guardiola is not accused of involvement in the Negreira affair or City’s financial violations. But both controversies are squarely in his two most successful managerial eras, meaning they will inevitably cast a long shadow over how those achievements are remembered.It used to be at least understandable why people were willing to debate Guardiola versus Ferguson.Now, with the City finds and the Negreira affair added to the historical record, the argument is much harder. A meaningful debate never took place.The UK-UAE KerfuffleSince David Cameron called for the ill-fated Brexit referendum, the UK has had seven Prime Ministers, the latest being the ‘King of the North’, Andy Burnham, who is a little too coy with Man City’s owners and could soon find his head on the chopping block.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham applauds on stage at the Labor Party conference in Liverpool, England. (AP photo)

Before becoming prime minister, he spent nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester, during which he repeatedly praised the Abu Dhabi ownership for its investment in the club and in East Manchester. He even stuck his neck out after the guilty verdict, saying he would be “really concerned” if City lost their owners.The Financial Times revealed that City chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak, one of Abu Dhabi’s most powerful figures and the man who also runs the £290bn Mubadala investment empire, has diplomatic immunity in Britain from 2020, protecting him from criminal prosecution and most civil proceedings in the UK.The Daily Mail reported that Abu Dhabi had warned the British government as early as 2023 that an adverse outcome in the City case could damage UK-UAE relations. The Mail also found that the Manchester Life partnership had first refusal on large development sites and Manchester City Council received no rental income until 2023-24, despite Mansour-linked companies making more than £39m over five years.Given the UK’s modern love of swapping prime ministers, it is not unlikely that Burnham’s ties to the UAE will become an albatross around his prime minister’s neck.India vs Brazil: What the 4-0 actually showedIt was a foregone conclusion that India would lose to Brazil, but there was more to see than the 4-0 scoreline would suggest. India really made Brazil uncomfortable for a while before the natural flow of things took over and maybe we should take heart from that. Khalid Jamil’s side stayed organised, defended with discipline and showed they can make at least one of the world’s best teams work for their goals.The gap in quality eventually revealed itself, as it always has. But for once, a heavy defeat didn’t feel completely unnecessary.“No time for idiots”Jürgen Klopp has always kept it simple, on and off the pitch. Asked about the latest debate over whether his Germany team is “German enough” or “white enough”, Klopp dismissed it as “absolute nonsense”, adding that he has little time for idiocy in his day-to-day life and even less for social media.The depressing part is that German football has already been here.When Germany crashed out of the 2018 World Cup, Mesut Özil, born in Gelsenkirchen to Turkish parents and a World Cup winner four years earlier, believed he had suddenly become the face of failure. When he announced his international retirement, he delivered perhaps the definitive line of conditional European nationalism: “If we win, I’m German, but if we lose, I’m an immigrant.”The artist is long gone, but for German football, the racial albatross seems to hang around its neck and rears its head whenever a man of color can be blamed.Ronaldo vs MessiSpeaking of pointless debates, it’s quite tiring to see Cristiano Ronaldo fade into a bland non-entity. While Messi was turning up for the last dance with Argentina, Ronaldo returned home from the Portugal camp after a seizure. On football Twitter – and other places where fans discuss the beautiful game – Ronaldo has often been referred to as the ‘Homelander’, the antagonist Guysa superhero character with severe narcissistic personality disorder.And the last phase of Messi and Ronaldo’s career is starting to resemble the final battle between Billy Butcher and Homelander after the latter loses his powers. While Messi still seems to have some stardust left, as we saw with Argentina during the World Cup, Ronaldo’s race seems to be on. It’s a tragic sight for all of us who have watched him grow up from being a touch and tease winger to one of the best footballers in the world. One never knows when to retire. Take Novak Djokovic, who recently showed Alexander Zverev how it’s done, but a similar redemption looks pretty unlikely for Ronaldo.Perhaps this is the one opponent Messi or Ronaldo have never been able to defeat: Father Time is coming for us all. Some just have the grace to deal with it a little more elegance.