European football: Pep’s choice

Nearly a year ago when Pep Guardiola, the most successful coach of the world’s best football team, FC Barcelona, quit at the end of a triumphant season, shockwaves went around the soccer universe. Almost immediately, speculation began about which team he would come back to train after a year-long sabbatical in the US. Global football chatter — always opinionated and occasionally substantive — speculated that two English clubs were likely destinations for Pep. These were Manchester City and Chelsea, each with super-rich owners. City’s owner Sheik Mansour, owns Etihad and is sitting on billions of UAE oil dollars. Chelsea is owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who, reportedly, began his career selling stolen military fuel to Soviet officers. Late Wednesday, Guardiola proved all the pundits wrong by revealing that he would return to coach German side Bayern Munich. What does Pep’s choice reveal about the state of European football?

Despite the chatter, it was incomprehensible that Guardiola would go to Chelsea. Abramovich has sacked coaches, even successful ones like Jose Mourinho and Antonio de Matteo, within months of winning major tournaments. If Pep had joined, he would have been Chelsea’s 10th coach in 10 years. No self-respecting person would care to manage Chelsea. Mansour has been less trigger-happy than Abramovich, but he could soon sack coach Mancini, after City’s under-performance this year. Besides, City is a side formed by brute cash-buying stars from rivals, unlike the institutional stability of Barcelona and its penchant for home-grown talent. In hindsight, Bayern, with its long legacy , Germanic stability and infrastructure was the logical choice for a star coach. In Pep’s choice, class has triumphed over cash.