Pep Guardiola's adventures in Manchester City

This is not the first time he takes drastic measures though. At Barça, especially in his first year,  Monday to Friday, the players were expected to be at home by midnight at the latest and they could expect a late-night call from Guardiola or an assistant.

If it went unanswered, then not properly explained, a four-figure fine was on the way.

I mean i'm not saying I sympathise with people making 6 figures a Week for having a part of their life dictated to them by an employer, but if pretty much nobody else is doing it then i'd be pissed too. Especially when you're not 12 years old and perfectly capable of using the internet without letting it interfere with your training.

i mean.. any other job would ask you not to spend your time on the internet doing personal things during work hours why is this so crazy??

and lets not act like them being adults matters too much, most of them act like teenagers

Well like I said I don't have sympathy but on the other hand there's zero evidence that banning wireless = improved performance. It's retarded, and over the top. Footballers are paid to win games, and i'd say Aguero and the likes are pretty good at that

As opposed to somebody doing data entry or packing equipment for the entire shift who will obviously lose productivity checking his tinder results every 10 minutes.

Maybe it is effecting their job, hence the ban

Not buying it, he's just being a control freak. Same guy who shits his pants when a defender clears the ball under immense pressure even when it's perfectly acceptable to do so.

As far as I know the other 39059080283 successful clubs don't impose this and they seem to manage. Hell the best players in the World spend half their time posting shit on social media.

"Control freak" has won 21 titles (more then most successfully clubs in that time frame) and holding a 75% win percentage in 7 years, so I'd say let him do what he feels is best for him and his team.

And? Does that nullify my points that

A) Having internet has zero effect on the players ability to do their jobs. Somebody better tell the best players in the World to stop posting instagram selfies I guess.

B) He's still a control freak.



If he wants to piss off a locker room by being a pedantic asshole that's cool, but as soon as shit hits the fan he's going to be the scapegoat.

as far as i know theres no science behind it but lets say you do a hard training session and head up for your massage or locker etc..

maybe he wants the players to think about shortcomings or mistakes etc that happened in those events rather than distracting themselves with social media or other applications.

Tomwin Lannister wrote:If he wants to piss off a locker room by being a pedantic asshole that's cool, but as soon as shit hits the fan he's going to be the scapegoat.

lets be honest he was already going to get blamed for any single short coming internet or no internet

The point is he banned it at work, not anywhere else, so I don't understand your point here? Messi/Ronaldo usually post selfies on their own time. He didn't banned wifi in their houses now did he? Second thing it's not about just selfies, but being on the phone when your training, prepping yourself for a match aka doing your job that he may have a problem with. His teams have taken selfies plenty of times after games, during traveling, etc. So, I think your looking too much into this.

Only person looking too much in to this is Pep, until I see some sort of evidence (Hint. There is none) That banning pro footballers from using wi-fi during downtime makes an iota of difference, then this to me just comes across as Pep being pedantic and a control freak.

Which is my point. And i'll leave it there because it's boring me to tears. Treat adults like adults.

This doesn't make any difference at all. Footballers aren't aliens, if everyone else on earth can use the internet during downtime and still function, then so can they.

he's the coach, he can do what he wants. granted i feel this is just one of those "i want to feel cool" moments, which if city does do well, fans of his will go back to and act like banning the internet was part of some process that improved them. he's probably just old school and thinks everything is a distraction

but i agree with tomwin's point, i don't see how this affects production. even when players lose games, its not common for them to be on social media after, they want to be avoided. and even if it is banned, because he wants players to think of mistakes....you can't control the players' thought process. you can shut down the wifi and all, and after a loss all the footballer's thinking about is going home to sleep with his wife or girlfriend

and its a very different environment from working at an office where the internet can be a distraction....it doesn't even remotely compare. maybe he's trying to save city money on internet bills, as rich as the club is, that to me is a far more reasonable explanation than "internet distracts players from thinking about their mistakes"

In fairness this isn't new, he did similar things at Barca. I remember hearing about instructing curfews on players and would ring them at their homes to make sure.

He's very obsessive, but unless it completely goes to shit which it hasn't in his career so far i don't see it being a problem.

Its not a big problem, its just weird

tbf you pay me even ~10k pounds per month and I'll gladly cut wi fi out of my life for during training imo

curfews are very different from internet. i'll flip it this way;

someone pointed out that at the office there are rules pertaining to social media use and all, and i mentioned how it was a different scenario

as an athlete, it isn't uncommon for coaches to monitor players' outings, and ring them at odd hours of the night. an athlete needs a good night's rest (though rodman, romario are huge exceptions) the spurs tried to do that with dennis rodman with little success. unlike his bulls run, where phil gave him all the freedom to live his life. however, it will be ridiculous for your boss at work to call you at 12 to make sure ure not out partying cos of work tomorrow...so its normal for athletes, ridiculous in the work space

same deal with the internet thing; normal in the work place, ridiculous for athletes. i don't think any top level athlete goes into games with their mind only focused on social media..even the top level athletes who tweet all the time, i doubt they're thinking about that in games

coaches just have certain feelings or beliefs and some of those feelings play a very very very tiny minuscule role in the team winning. e.g. phil jackson, getting his players to meditate with sage....you really think it had any big an influence on mj shaq or kobe dropping 30, 40 points when they needed to? many have their pet peeves that they force themselves to believe in, and this is no different

aragones used to go out of his way to ban yellow colors (weird cos spain's stripes were yellow) when he coached mallorca and atleti, (i think he might have even had an incident with raul during a spain practice session). for whatever reason he hated the color and made it clear to everyone it was a problem for him

CBarca wrote:tbf you pay me even ~10k pounds per month and I'll gladly cut wi fi out of my life for during training imo

I'd use internet only at home for 10k / month

The idiot thinks the reason they lost to Spurs was because of internet? What a control freak, just admit you made your fair share of mistakes you prick

The Demon of Carthage wrote:This is not the first time he takes drastic measures though. At Barça, especially in his first year,  Monday to Friday, the players were expected to be at home by midnight at the latest and they could expect a late-night call from Guardiola or an assistant.

If it went unanswered, then not properly explained, a four-figure fine was on the way.

Why is this drastic matters though? They are technically working so why is to so controversial? It's stupid but literally at any job in the world there are similar rules. Pep is certainly not your ordinary coach, lol.

If there really is no wifi signal and not even 3G in an area players are a shit lot of time in, I can understand if he bans cell phone use or whatever during training, but considering most of these players have families, I as a player would appreciate my cell phone at least having some sort of communication with the outside world in case of a personal emergency.

Pep's a good coach, but all that anger you usually get other managers blowing out to your players, is vented in creative and controlling schemes such as these. Pep's never going to talk crap about you or shun you out (unless you have an ego ) but he will control your wifi and what time you get home. Balances out in the end, I'd say.

if I were a player I would prefer getting punched in face twice daily by coach instead of being deprived of basic necessities such as Twitter and porn tbh. What is this North Korea?

Lucifer wrote:if I were a player I would prefer getting punched in face twice daily by coach instead of being deprived of basic necessities such as Twitter and porn tbh. What is this North Korea?

Ironically, getting punched in the face would be more North Korea.

Plus, I'm sure you don't have porn or Twitter in NK

"I hear a lot of times about the intensity of the Premier League when none of you have been in La Liga or the Bundesliga to know how it is," he said.

"The problem here is maybe that there are more games but the way that they play in Germany is... [whistles]... it's amazing.

"I think you have to have respect for the other leagues, how they play and the way they play.

"Of course Barcelona is special in how they play, a machine. Three amazing players in front, good counter-attack, the way they build-up so when they win 4-0 it's because they deserve to win 4-0.

"I think every league has its points but especially it's the quality of the players and that's the reason why. In Spain in the last seven, eight, nine years they're winning or in the final of all the European competitions because they play well because they have good players. That is the reason why.

"Here there are more games to play... but the intensity in Italy, in all of these places, is the same."

Pep

what did you expect him to say? coaches put a lot of thought into these kind of answers. a coach like mourinho will obviously call the epl the best because he didn't get the success he would have liked in spain. he'll also mind how he praises italian football, because even though he was highly successful, his inter side was practically the bayern munich of that league during that period i.e. signing the better players from direct rivals ala gotze and lewandowski. and, mourinho has been a bit opinionated about bayern

coaches will praise the leagues they've been very successful in. pep's not going to bash any of those leagues (spain and germany) because he's been successful there and is just starting his english experience. if he finds success in england as well, i won't be surprised when he 'whistles' and starts raving about how amazing the football, the culture, the people and the food are

its all tell them what they want to here with managers and footballers