“Genius” Pep Guardiola Has Brought Extraordinary Innovation In Football: Rio Ferdinand

Rio Ferdinand thinks that the way Pep Guardiola crunches new Football ideas every week, it almost seems as if he does that out of boredom.

According to Ferdinand, some of the tactics that Guardiola has deployed since taking over as the manager of Manchester City, nobody was using those tactics in English Football before.

Using the example of goalkeepers, Ferdinand said that the goalkeepers, before Guardiola, were simply the shotstoppers in the English league. Their job was to stop the ball from going into the net and nothing else.

But, Guardiola has tried to get the goalkeepers into the game. He made it very clear when he arrived in England that he wouldn’t like to have those goalkeepers at his disposal who couldn’t use their feet.

That was the reason why he got rid of Joe Hart straightaway. Hart, otherwise, was a quality goalkeeper, but he didn’t fit Guardiola’s style of goalkeeping. He was not involved into the play much and used to sit back.

Guardiola’s idea is that when a goalkeeper starts using his feet and starts coordinating with the defenders, it allows the defenders to go further up the pitch and provide more services to the offensive line.

“He (Guardiola) is a genius sitting there, he’s an innovator, he’s changed the way we see football. It’s crazy some of the stuff he does. Sometimes you think, is it boredom? Was he just bored of winning the way he was before?” Ferdinand was quoted saying by BT Sport.

Pep Guardiola has overseen three seasons at Manchester City so far and he has won two Premier League titles in that duration.

Guardiola hasn’t achieved success at City only. He has also managed Bayern Munich and Barcelona in the past and has been mighty successful with those two teams as well. The Spaniard is regarded as one of the best Football managers to have come through in the last decade or so.