Nice view out of the Mandarin Oriental in New York. At £780 a night, you’d hope so. Plenty of greenery about, the suites looking out over to Umpire Rock at the south end of Central Park.
Pep Guardiola hadn’t been in his room long when a wander along the paths he trod while on a sabbatical in America all those years ago seemed appealing. Manchester City‘s squad, with Erling Haaland, Jack Grealish and impressionable youngsters, were soon summoned for a team walk.
Even the best aren’t exempt from a mandatory stroll and Guardiola took them up to Sheep Meadow, a 15-acre expanse just before you reach the park’s lake and its boathouse. A little crowd had gathered, the sun beating down and with the manager – you suspect – not fancying an hour’s drive up to Orangeburg to their training base, an impromptu mosey turned into a training session.
A light session: some stretches, a bit of a run. Jack Grealish jokingly complained at the state of the patchy surface. A few balls were knocking around and they messed about keeping those airborne for a while.
City had just lost their opening pre-season friendly over in North Carolina to Celtic with a fortnight to go until Saturday’s Wembley curtain-raiser Community Shield and Central Park was deemed a fun and different way of doing the boring recovery stuff, something Guardiola’s always been adept at gauging.
Man City’s players had an impromptu team training session in New York’s Central Park in July
The session involved a bit of running as the Premier League players jogged around the park
With 13 first-team regulars still on their post-European Championship breaks, they were nowhere close to ready. Guardiola knew that and, in a perverse sort of way, embraces this lack of fitness every year.
He’s the manager who offers the longest breaks over the summer and it was striking that at the Community Shield, Erik ten Hag started Kobbie Mainoo – and would’ve picked Luke Shaw but for fitness issues – while City’s England contingent, plus Rodri, weren’t even back through the training ground doors, let alone playing.
These are wildly opposing theories to conditioning and the lengthy breaks are something City’s boss swears by. Guardiola has told them to return when they want and feel able to do so. Within reason.
It is a key differential for City and arguably the main aspect of their blueprint that has led them to four Premier League titles on the spin. They can weather a few dodgy results earlier in the season, which usually come a few weeks in (this year look out for Wolves away in October, Tottenham at home in November), once the adrenaline of players bursting back into club football wears off. Year-on-year they crank it up around Christmas, after being annually written off in the autumn, and year-on-year they hunt down whoever might have set the pace.
The players swear blind that there is no magic formula to this, that the long winning stretches around the turn of the year are coincidental. Mateo Kovacic let the idea ruminate before telling Mail Sport in America it was probably down to Guardiola’s rotation over anything else. ‘The guys come fresh into the last three or four months into the season,’ he said.
City won the Community Shield on Saturday after beating Man United via a penalty shootout
City manager Pep Guardiola pictured on the touchline during Saturday’s game at Wembley
But it’s hard to look past a manager who makes sure summers are not cut short as one fairly sizeable reason why the endorphins kick in as the line approaches.
‘Pep was very generous to us,’ said Bernardo Silva, who headed in City’s late equaliser against Manchester United to force penalties at Wembley. ‘He understands that we’ve been playing with the crazy schedule that we have because of FIFA, UEFA, the Premier League and all the cups that we have.
‘It’s 70, 80 games a season sometimes, which is not easy. So it was very generous and now our job is to be serious, to prepare well and to come back as fit as possible to another long season knowing that our rivals came back a little bit earlier and maybe their physical condition is a bit better than ours.
‘Hopefully we’re all fine and play top at Chelsea next week but I don’t have that answer. But that’s no excuse. We’ve had that in the past. We came late last season as well.’
Three City players – Ruben Dias, Manuel Akanji, Jeremy Doku – started against United having gone through only a couple of training sessions. Five came off the bench, including Silva, with the same training minutes behind them. Guardiola sacrifices the short term for the larger goals and that is not an easy thing to do in this age. It’s no walk in the park.
After the serene kickabout in Central Park, City lost again at Yankee Stadium – this time to AC Milan – before heading off to Orlando, where they drew against Barcelona on a tour during which the youngsters thrived. Oscar Bobb, possibly man of the match against United on Saturday, looks ready to make that right wing spot his own and Nico O’Reilly, who fought hard on his senior debut in holding his own in the face of Casemiro and Mainoo, was the surprise package Stateside.
Bernardo Silva hit a late equaliser in a 1-1 draw with United, before City won 7-6 on penalties
Guardiola pictured waving at City fans following Saturday’s victory in the Community Shield
When City went to Orlando they stayed in the Disney-themed Four Seasons and there came a warning to remain watchful of alligators skulking about, particularly if going out for a run around the sprawling 26-acre complex. England’s not Florida when it comes to gators, but City are aware there will be a few snapping at their heels in a fury to snatch that crown, which leaves its permanent residence in Manchester to be paraded around China next week.
‘We don’t like to lose and we’re going to be ready for the season knowing that it’s going to be tough,’ Silva added. ‘And you cannot win forever. One day we will lose. Hopefully not this season, but one day. It will happen to us.’
Guardiola therefore has to find ways of subtly changing the messaging every year. When Arsene Wenger was invited to City’s training ground recently, the pair had lunch together with chief executive Ferran Soriano, sporting director Txiki Begiristain and the backroom staff. Guardiola asked the chef at his Catalan restaurant in town, Tast, to cook and generally made a fuss of the Arsenal legend. Conversation quickly gravitated towards management and Guardiola’s thoughts on how to squeeze the maximum from the elite. ‘If you have energy, they have energy,’ he told him.
That comes in various guises. It might be how he believes simply going for another title cannot be a motivation tool after such consistent success, so focus on improving as an individual instead. Or berating his midfield when, 2-0 up against Chelsea in Ohio, they started slowing the game down in a way you might expect Guardiola to actually want the team to control a match. Moaning so much that his assistant, Juanma Lillo, failed to stifle his laughter.
Or even basic games formulated in training, like the reaction test he’s tried when players have to clap as a ball is bounced or stay still when he feigns to throw it. Choose wrong and you’re eliminated. They go on and on until somebody wins. It prompts smiles and giggles.
They’re not reasons for success but he is good at offering up something new or something surprising which makes players think or second guess. And the hard work now starts, with the weeks before the Champions League starts on September 17 earmarked to hammer the fundamentals at the City Football Academy.
Jack Grealish (left) and Erling Haaland (right) pictured during a City training session in the USA
City played Chelsea in a pre-season friendly and will now face them again next weekend
This is the only time all season – a season which could finish in mid-July if they reach the latter stages of the Club World Cup next summer – that Guardiola will enjoy free midweeks to coach. When Dias posted a colour-coded spreadsheet of the schedule last week, effectively showing a jumbled rainbow, the enormity of what lays in store for the European teams crystalised.
It is why the last month and the next are so crucial for Guardiola, because this is what he does and this is what serves City so well. Give them rest. Then nail down the new patterns of play, a tinker on the style, in training before everything starts piling up. It’s not definitive as to why City have four in a row yet provides a foundation to their unrivalled domestic dominance.
