Pragmatism Versus Purism

The Champions League might have only restarted on Tuesday, but this season has already seen a continuation of one of its defining clashes. It might yet finish with an even more decisive encounter between the two. We’re probably overdue.

Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola certainly felt due a spat. Yet as trivial as their widely reported exchange at last week’s UEFA coaching conference was, it’s still remarkable how much of it touched on so many significant elements from their collective past.

First of all, there was a familiar topic of debate: the length of a pitch’s grass.

Second, there was the reason for that and what it emphasised about their approaches: Guardiola wants grass to be no longer than 1.5 centimeters to facilitate faster play.

That led to an effective debate about philosophy, as something so apparently innocuous incredibly gave way to far deeper themes.

“Everyone has his style of play, which should be respected,” Mourinho reportedly responded. “Football can be spectacular in several ways.”

“The beauty of football depends on the coach,” Guardiola said. “It seems to me that Mourinho prefers the result to the spectacle.”

Finally, there was a depressingly familiar outcome out of something that should be so engaging: a somewhat spiteful jibe.

“When you enjoy what you do, you don’t lose your hair, and Guardiola is bald,” Mourinho said. “He doesn’t enjoy football.”

That’s impossible to actually know, but one thing is clear — both managers have enjoyed more success in the past decade than pretty much anyone else.

In some ways, it was almost historically out of place that Carlo Ancelotti beat the duo to matching Bob Paisley’s record of three European Cups, given that both Mourinho and Guardiola seemed in a longer race against each other to reach that milestone.

One of them doing so would have been appropriate because, more than anyone or anything else, they have defined the past decade of the competition.

“The tournament is part of my history, and I am part of the tournament’s history,” Mourinho said on Tuesday. That, however, is not an isolated place. It has been intertwined with Guardiola’s for some time.

That’s also particularly pointed, as we’ve never seen a duel like that in the competition’s history. Over 59 years of the European Cup, there has never been another period so clearly defined and influenced by the contrast between two major personalities, with their differences also reflecting the opposing primary approaches to best playing the sport itself.

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It is Brian Clough against Don Revie on a grander scale and with even deeper dimensions.

If all of this sounds exaggerated, just consider the competition’s tapestry over the past decade.

Mourinho himself heralded a new era through the 2004 Champions League win with FC Porto. The Portuguese side showed smaller outfits could still defeat the big clubs through intelligent pragmatism, and it did not seem a coincidence they were immediately followed by Greece claiming that summer’s European Championships.

Those victories set a template and also emphasised that, at that point in football history, physicality and power were the most important qualities.

That was best shown by Mourinho’s next club. His first Chelsea team were probably Europe’s finest side in the 2004-05 Champions League and arguably should have won it. They were denied by the width of a goal line and the breadth of a post, as Liverpool’s Luis Garcia forced the ball past Petr Cech, despite the goalkeeper’s foul in an epic semifinal before Eidur Gudjohnsen missed an opportunity for a late away goal.

The same could not be said a year later, as Chelsea were so clearly bested by Frank Rijkaard’s fully formed Barcelona. Those games between the two teams were the start of something — and not just Mourinho’s rancorous relationship with the Catalan club for which he used to work as a coach and interpreter.

Rijkaard’s Barca were the first true response to the physical rigour of the mid-2000s but also a long-awaited reversion to the principles of Johan Cruyff’s 1992 ‘Dream Team,’ for which Guardiola played such a central role.

It’s interesting to wonder how football history would have progressed had Barca gone through with their initial plan once Rijkaard lost control, and then his job, in 2008. It seemed certain they would appoint Mourinho.

The Portuguese felt he had secured the job once he met with Barca officials in the summer of 2008. Some Camp Nou directors were also privately enthused about the potential wealth in uniting two “brands” of such resonance: Barca and Mourinho.

It didn’t happen. Rather than be united, the two were pulled even farther apart to create one of football’s most resonant dichotomies.

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Never before in the European Cup has so much been wrapped up in two different figures. Guardiola and Mourinho came to represent so much more than Barcelona and Internazionale. There was attack versus defence, proactive football versus reactive football, possession versus space, youth versus expenditure and purism versus pragmatism.

Those contrasts set up two grandstand semifinals over 2010 and 2011 and also ensured three successive finals won by either Mourinho or Guardiola: 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Surprisingly, neither has won a single Champions League since, but their stamp has still been over all of the champions in that time.

Chelsea’s 2012 was the last great feat of the squad core Mourinho put in place back in 2004, while Bayern Munich specifically took on many of Barcelona’s ideals after meeting Guardiola’s historic side in the 2008-09 quarterfinals.

Even if a dysfunctional Real Madrid had to discard Mourinho in order to win the 2014 trophy, it was still a direct response to the rancour of his three years at the club and bore much of his influence. The manner of the 5-0 aggregate semifinal win over Guardiola’s Bayern was straight from the Mourinho playbook.

It was also the second time in three seasons the Champions League has been denied that ultimate showdown: a Mourinho-Guardiola final.

Now, though the draw might not be able to keep them apart, there is a sense that both their current teams are finally arriving somewhere near the peaks of those 2010 days. It’s increasingly difficult to imagine one will not end this “drought” as the Champions League kicks off again.

Both are in their second seasons at Bayern and Chelsea, respectively, and both have attempted significant evolution in their clubs. The two teams do look more complete and with more available angles than the past season. “I think the second season is a good space for evolution, for improvement,” Mourinho said on Tuesday.

As has always been the case with this duel, there are more crossovers and similarities between the two than either might like to admit. Many of their supposed ideological differences merely represent alternative directions out of the same initial idea. That could also be said of their entire managerial careers, given that both see Louis van Gaal as such a primary influence.

Now, the crossovers are further personified. Guardiola has taken one of Mourinho’s most vocal disciples in Xabi Alonso, while the Portuguese has responded with someone who used to idolise the Catalan in Cesc Fabregas.

The two midfielders might be key in finally delivering a third European Cup for one of the managers. They might also see the crossover the past decade should have set up long ago.

Either way — and whatever happens — this Champions League season will just be another that bears the deep influence of the competition’s most defining managers.

If one of them doesn’t win it, it will likely be claimed by whoever eliminates them. The benchmark has long been set.