Trouble in paradise - The Sergio Aguero and Pep Guardiola story
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In this age of unscrupulous footballers, there have few players that have personified a club as much as Sergio Aguero. After the likes of Francesco Totti, Tony Adams and even Paul Scholes, Manchester City’s Argentine is a history maker, but his marriage with Pep Guardiola might just be his downfall.
Champions in 1937, relegated from the top tier in 1938. That’s Manchester City at their best and then at their worst, all within the space of a year. Then came their second league title nearly 30 years later, winning it on the final day of the 1967/1968 season. Then came the downfall, the relegation to the third tier and the humiliation that comes with something like that. But that isn’t Manchester City that we know.
That isn’t a Manchester City post-2008, a trophy hungry side backed up by an owner who was literally willing to spend till he dropped in order to get them where they needed to be. To become champions of England once again, a goal that was eventually achieved in the most dramatic way possible. Yet at the heart of that and everything since, there has been one rock. One superstar, one consistent marksman at the heart of everything, one man to do the one thing that wins football games.
Score goals and score them at such an absurdly consistent rate that people have often pinched him to check if he’s human or an other-planetary figure. So much so that within 8 years, he’s considered a legend at an English club, in an English league, by a mostly English audience so finicky, they change their minds a gazillion times before coming to conclusions. That’s the sheer impact that Sergio Aguero has had on Manchester City, the Premier League and England on a whole.
Yet things have changed under Pep Guardiola. The Spaniard loves a striker who can score goals just as much as any other manager, but he has his own quirks to add to that. But a Pep Guardiola striker doesn’t simply just score goals. Instead, he expects or rather demands them to score goals, create goals, link-up play, defend from up high, apply the high press or even tackle if needed. All reasonable demands but when it has not been met, it’s led to a rather acrimonious exit by superstars.
Alexander Helb, Thierry Henry, Ediur Gujohnsen, Bojan Krkic, Mario Gotze and even the great Zlatan Ibrahimovic. It’s the infamous my way or the highway method of keeping players that want to be here, which works until it doesn’t. Yet so far at Manchester City, it seems to have worked. Sergio Aguero has turned himself inside out to fit Pep’s requirements. It did take a rather big kick in the backside via a benching and watching his heir to the throne in Gabriel Jesus take over seamlessly, and effortlessly do what the Spaniard was asking.
Even while back-page tabloids spoke tall and rather true tails of the Spaniard’s ruthlessness to cut players, Aguero adjusted. But Pep loves to rotate and disrupt teams, which meant that despite both men returning around the same time after pre-season, the Spaniard opted to start Jesus on the opening day of the newest season. Aguero eventually walked on to miss and score the same penalty, but that signals change. It has happened before. First to Yaya Toure and Joe Hart in Pep’s early Manchester City and later with Vincent Kompany getting fazed out.
If it wasn’t for various injuries, the Belgian may never have started as much as he did in the 100 point season. Yet Aguero isn’t them, but Aguero and all this on/off-field drama is distracting the club from the bigger objective - The quadruple. That ill-fated quartet of trophies that have been just out of reach. It is possibly the only reason that Sheikh Mansour brought on Guardiola, to win him everything, and quash any critics that the club does have left. Yet in Kun Aguero, City have their best man for the job.
The big game man, the step-up king, the man for the moments, need this go on? The stats back everything. He’s their all-time record goalscorer, flourishing under Pep, loves the big games, loves the Premier League and wants the Champions League. City, on the other hand, needs someone like Aguero on the big stage, as no-one else has shown the ability to handle that kind of pressure. Not Raheem Sterling, not Riyad Mahrez and especially not Gabriel Jesus.
That might change as latter grows a little older, but right now, it’s far from the correct solution to bench one of the best strikers in the world for an albeit equally talented one. However, while Guardiola has been about as diplomatic as one can be when describing what “really happened” in what has now been dubbed as the “incident”, Aguero has to realise something. His time is coming to an end.
Whether he, City fans or even Jesus wants to believe it, Aguero’s time is coming to an end. He may adapt, or even change his style of play to keep up with his ageing knees, but the Premier League is a ferocious league and it is not a kind league. It’s equal parts harsh and brilliant, which is why we love it. But that’s just what makes the next few years so important for both Manchester City, as this is arguably one of the last chances they’ll ever get to win that quadruple.
And it’s the last chance Aguero will get to establish a lasting legacy at the club, one that will live long even in his absence. And more than anything Manchester City needs him to do just that because with arguably the best team they’ve had in a long long time, they cannot afford a rift. And not a rift between their superstar striker and their superstar manager.
Because, if there is one thing Pep Guardiola knows very well, a rift never helps in your quest for a quadruple. Because if there is one manager that knows a rift doesn’t help the side, it’s Pep and he knows it all too well. Don’t know the incident? Well just ask serial winner Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was supposed to be the final piece of that Barcelona puzzle. It didn’t work between manager and superstar, and the world around them crumbled like a delicious cookie.
Guardiola needs to make sure that they do not follow that lead otherwise, things will go from bad to worse, albeit their worse might just mean finishing second. But for a team like Manchester City, that’s as good as a death sentence.
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