Manchester City’s Success Highlights Pep Guardiola’s Full-back Plan

 Manchester City’s manager, Pep Guardiola, with Kyle Walker. Photograph: Tottenham Hotspur FC/Getty Images
Manchester City’s manager, Pep Guardiola, with Kyle Walker. Photograph: Tottenham Hotspur FC/Getty Images
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Manchester City’s Success Highlights Pep Guardiola’s Full-back Plan

 Manchester City’s manager, Pep Guardiola, with Kyle Walker. Photograph: Tottenham Hotspur FC/Getty Images
Manchester City’s manager, Pep Guardiola, with Kyle Walker. Photograph: Tottenham Hotspur FC/Getty Images

According to some people, any club who can afford to spend £50m on a full-back should be champions. I have lost count of the amount of times this line has been used as a reason why Manchester City deservedly won the Premier League title, which has effectively been theirs since December. The references to the purchases of Kyle Walker and Benjamin Mendy are demeaning – implying the least important position on the pitch in today’s game is full-back.

The more discerning football supporter would have watched the Champions League semi-finals and appreciated both matches were determined by the positioning and performances of the players in a position which I believe is the least-promoted and most undervalued in the sport.

Take Liverpool’s attacking exploits against Roma on Tuesday, when the Italian side set up without full-backs in a back three so Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané were able to run riot behind a defence who were either three against three in transitional play or attempting to defend in a block and struggling to contain the penetrating runs of Liverpool’s wide men.

It meant Salah and Mané were able to operate in space and run at pace against taller, less agile centre-halves, which has been their speciality in an outstanding run in the competition. Both of Roma’s late away goals were scored after Salah was withdrawn. By then Roma had reverted to a back four with full-backs who were in much better starting positions to deal with Liverpool’s direct play from wide areas. This gave them a platform to attack for the first time and the momentum swung in their favour in the final 15 minutes.

Then there was Bayern Munich against Real Madrid on Wednesday, and again players in the defensive positions were key to the outcome. The goal by Bayern’s Joshua Kimmich was a perfect example of the full-back’s role in the modern game – having the stamina and quality to run 80 yards to score, utilising the space vacated by, yes, you guessed it, Marcelo, who had not recovered to his defensive left-back position quickly enough. And then Marcelo atoned for his defensive error by scoring a technically fantastic equaliser at a time when Bayern looked capable of adding to their lead. His tactical position to pick up the loose ball was absolutely perfect.

Factor in that Lucas Vázquez became Real’s most important player in the final 30 minutes – dealing with Franck Ribéry’s outstanding play from the left wing – and you have an excellent example of how important attacking and defensive full-back play is to a team’s performance and the result. This opens the debate that we need to see the bigger picture in a more interconnected way, rather than a sport where any one position is more important or valuable in determining the result of a match.

Throughout my career the significance of excellent full-backs to the functionality of a team, especially at the highest level, has been undervalued in comparison with other areas of the pitch. We always hear about the importance of “the spine of the team” or the “need for a goalscorer”, which is understandable, but is there another position where a player needs to have long-distance stamina, explosive power in one-v-one situations, sound defensive and tactical awareness, and also to be technically proficient enough to provide decent service to attacking colleagues with crosses and assists?

A major component of Manchester City’s dominance this season has been Pep Guardiola’s positional use of his full-backs in the half-space in order to overload the middle of the pitch and overwhelm teams both in possession and in transition. Without the outstanding play of Kyle Walker and the development of Fabian Delph on a technical and tactical level, there is no way City would be the force they are. If Guardiola did not value the importance of the position, moreover, he would not set his team up in the way that he does, spend the money he has on full-backs, and set such high physical, technical and tactical demands for them.

My favourite goal growing up was Carlos Alberto’s for Brazil in their 1979 World Cup final triumph over Italy in Mexico. I would rewind on my VHS to watch the passing and interplay leading up to the goal and Pelé’s perfectly weighted pass for Carlos Alberto to drive forward on the overlap and smash the ball into the far corner of the net.

This way of thinking paved the way for the outstanding Roberto Carlos and Cafu in later years, with their stamina and ability to play the length of the pitch enabling Brazil to dominate numerically in the centre of midfield, and to win the 2002 World Cup.

The use and lack of value I feel we have placed on the role of full-back in England has set us back tactically for years in comparison with our rivals, but I feel we are catching up. This is why I am sure Manchester City will not be the only team spending £50m on a full-back in the future.

The Guardian Sport



Young African Players Chase Football 'Dream' in Brazil

Young African footballers like Santos FC's Angolan forward Osvaldo Yamba Kinanga, are playing in Brazil, a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of footballers in the world - AFP
Young African footballers like Santos FC's Angolan forward Osvaldo Yamba Kinanga, are playing in Brazil, a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of footballers in the world - AFP
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Young African Players Chase Football 'Dream' in Brazil

Young African footballers like Santos FC's Angolan forward Osvaldo Yamba Kinanga, are playing in Brazil, a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of footballers in the world - AFP
Young African footballers like Santos FC's Angolan forward Osvaldo Yamba Kinanga, are playing in Brazil, a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of footballers in the world - AFP

For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play football is easily summed up: "It was a dream."

"I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people," he told AFP in Sao Paulo.

For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America's most prominent clubs.

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He and a small number of other Africans are today tearing across pitches in Brazil, a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of footballers in the world, from Pele to Neymar.
For at least one, though, the transformative opportunity has also been tinged by racism.

In Brazil, an incubator for star players bought up by Europe's moneyed elite clubs, the benefit in return is new blood for its lower divisions, with players who are fiercely committed.

The Africans also are paid less than footballers from neighboring Argentina and Uruguay, according to AFP.

And European sides also are increasingly showcasing talented African players, burnishing their appeal and helping demolish longstanding barriers in Brazilian clubs against foreign talent.

"It's about intensity," said Ricardo Manfrim Goncalves, of the Quality agency representing players.

"They are going to commit more than what even a Brazilian player will."

- 'People underestimate us' -

The agent said the young African players -- usually strikers -- are frequently not of interest to the European clubs, and are seen as contributing to offset what he called a "decline" in Brazilian lower-division teams.

Although the African transfer trend is relatively minor for the moment, it has picked up since last year, adding a new aspect to the sport in Brazil, where Pele stills holds demi-god status, two years after dying at the age of 82.

Brazilian scouts now regularly scour Africa for promising young players, and have so far found them in Angola, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal.

Since 2023, at least a dozen have been signed by or tried out for youth squads, ranging from first- and second-division teams to those that compete only in state championships, according to an AFP tally.

At the professional level, they include Angolan center-back Bastos, with the Botafogo club, which made it through to the November 30 final of the Copa Libertadores tournament.

There is also Congolese winger Yannick Bolasie with Criciuma, and Gambian forward Yusupha Njie with Santos, the club that brought Pele and Neymar into the limelight.

For those taking up the call, the reality of moving to Brazil -- the country with the biggest population of African descendants outside Africa -- has its problems.

Beyond the issues of language, separation from family members and cultural differences, there is racism.

Brazil's classist society, in which people of European descent are often perceived as of higher status than those of African descent, can make the transition difficult.

Osvaldo Yamba Kinanga, who arrived in Sao Paulo nine years ago from Angola with his family and now plays in Santos' under-15s, said he was initially buffeted by the racism directed at him.

"A lot of people underestimate us," he said.

"I'm proud of being African -- we're more competitive. I don't want to speak badly of the Brazilians, but some just relax because they're born with the ability to play football."

- 'Land of football' -

Today a naturalized Brazilian citizen, Yamba Kinanga hopes to have the future choice of playing for the national side of either Angola or Brazil.

For new arrivals, the financial boost of playing in Brazil can be substantial. Some of their Brazilian peers earn monthly salaries in the thousands of dollars.

"There are players aged 11, 12, 13 who are sometimes earning absurd amounts" that can "warp" their development, said Manfrim Goncalves of the Quality agency.

For many of the African teens, though, the chance to develop their careers in the spiritual home of the beautiful game is the overriding appeal.

"The whole world knows Brazil as the land of football," said Coulibaly Yeko Appolinaire, a 16-year-old who was captain of Ivory Coast's national team in his category before starting five months ago with Santos.

His Portuguese is still coming along, but his ambition to make it big in Brazil is plain.

"We used to sit at home and watch the great players on the television. Now we'd love to be like those great players. That's my dream," he said.