Pressing Issues

As one of Spain’s most decorated sports journalists and a long-term friend of Pep Guardiola, there is perhaps no one more qualified to compose a trilogy about the most influential manager in football than Marti Perarnau. ‘The Pep Revolution’, the third in the series, covers Guardiola’s experience at Manchester City, detailing the Spaniard’s learnings during his first season at the Etihad, all the way up to City’s treble-winning 2022/23 campaign.

Perarnau so clearly has a comprehensive understanding of Guardiola’s fascinating tactical intricacies, and offers incredible insight, both from his perspective and from his many conversations with Guardiola which are woven into the book’s week-by-week chronological narrative, into the reasons behind various tactical changes that have gone on to transform English football.

In addition to this, Perarnau deeply explores Guardiola’s interest in different leadership approaches, citing various books and sporting figures as case studies from which the 54-year-old has learned and developed.

The biography also delves deep into Guardiola’s relentless work-ethic, highlighting both the positives – such as how his perfectionist nature hastened the development of City – but also the negative effects that the Spaniard’s inability to “switch off” can have on his mental well-being. Perarnau makes it clear that football management is, to Guardiola, a 24/7 job. Whether he is at a restaurant with his wife, on holiday, or in bed late at night, the obsessive manager’s mind seems incapable of being distracted from his day-job.

One of the book’s great protagonists (in its latter half) is Juan Manuel “Juanma” Lillo whom Perarnau paints as an optmistic critical thinker. Lillo is depicted as a studious, curious individual obsessed with leadership strategies, always teaching his boss new approaches to management and interpersonal relationships – until he leaves just before the treble winning season that is.

The book’s ‘no stone unturned’ writing style conveys to the reader the daily challenges of football management, but never gets side-tracked and more often than not, the pacing is perfect. Perarnau expertly blends the intricacies and details that only he can offer with a seven-year long plot that never loses sight of its title: Pep’s ‘revolution’ is depicted as a constant learning process riddled with hurdles but also one of great triumph, with a long transformation condensed into 600 pages.

The book must however, be interpreted with some caution. Perarnau’s friendship with Guardiola grants the reader exclusive insight, but arguably also skews the author’s own perception of events, which is then portrayed in the book. That’s not to say that Perarnau shies away from Guardiola’s tribulations or even that the author is trying to sway a reader’s interpretation of the manager, but he certainly enjoys a level of admiration from Perarnau that is overly apparent in places.

That’s not to discredit the book’s viewpoint – from a footballing perspective Perarnau’s opinions are always rational, and he takes no shame in the fact that he is enamored by Guardiola’s work ethic.

For this reason, the book is exactly what a reader would expect from a friend-written biography. An incredible inside perspective laced with exclusive opinions, with hints of a slightly over-optimistic view in places – but certainly not to an extent where it compromises the readers’ experience. The Pep Revolution is undoubtedly a worthwhile read for any football fan eager to gain an understanding of one of football’s greatest minds.