Pep Guardiola has a cold. He sits on a dais in an auditorium at the Etihad Campus, his eyes darting around, taking everything in, examining everything, surveying the rows of seats that rise away from him and the journalists sitting in them and waiting for the questions to come.
When he speaks, it is in a voice that barely rises above a whisper. To begin with, it seems he is being deliberately taciturn. Sometimes, that is his way. To begin with, it seems he is stripping all the emotion out of his words because he knows Anfield lives on emotion. He does not want to feed it before the opera that will be acted and sung there on Sunday.
He is asked first about the things Liverpool’s vice-captain Trent Alexander-Arnold said about how triumphs mean more to Liverpool than Manchester City because Liverpool do not have the riches City possess.
He is expecting the question. He looks bored by the room’s attempt to stoke a fire of animosity. And so he responds with what sounds like a prepared answer. He speaks as if he is repeating a line he has learned by rote from a script, a line he has little appetite for.
He is asked the same question about Alexander-Arnold twice and so he repeats the same answer, refusing to be drawn, studiously expressionless. ‘I wish him well,’ the City manager says. ‘I wish him a speedy recovery to come back to the pitch as soon as possible. Speedy recovery and next question.’
English football will face a huge period of change when Pep Guardiola eventually leaves City
Much of the talk has turned to how English football will mourn Jurgen Klopp when he leaves Liverpool ahead of his final Premier League clash against Guardiola’s City
A couple of times, Guardiola looks down and covers his mouth with his hand and coughs quietly. ‘Frank Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel,’ Gay Talese wrote in his famous Esquire essay, ‘…it robs him of that uninsurable jewel, his voice.’
It is not the same with Guardiola. A cold does not steal the essence of Guardiola away. His voice is not his primary gift. His gift is an intensity that cannot be quenched, that burns in his eyes even when his voice falters. His gift is his relentlessness, his acumen, his refusal to rest, his refusal to let others rest, even superstars.
Margaret Thatcher only slept four hours a night, it is said. ‘Then she was stronger than me,’ Guardiola, 53, says. ‘I need more.’ But it is hard to imagine him switching off. Ever. It is hard to imagine him being able to relax or spend a single moment where he is not thinking about football and talking about football.
He talks about that for a while. Not in relation to Jurgen Klopp, his great rival, who he collides with one last time on Sunday in a titanic clash that may decide the destination of the title. But rather the pressures that any leading manager faces now. The pressures he faces.
The temptation is to think that when Guardiola leaves, the whole edifice that was painstakingly built for him will come crashing down in his wake
‘All of us have ups and downs as a manager,’ Guardiola says. ‘We feel guilty. We feel a responsibility for many people who trust you, for the club you represent. That is normal. In Barcelona, I was really tired and so I left. Here, I stayed longer than I thought I would when I arrived. I think every case is different.
‘There is no person to know when you will be tired, happy, sad. I learned in my job, don’t go against your mood. When you are sad, you are sad. Tomorrow, be better. When you are tired, there are influences from people, family, friends.
‘People today in modern life have to be so happy all the time, show how good is your food you ate yesterday and show to the world. Now, we are a little bit sad, it’s normal. I am tired sometimes but now in my job, I’m fine.
‘Is there pressure not to show tiredness? We know each other incredibly well, a lot of people here. They know when I am tired or not in a good mood. They realise it, it’s not a problem.
‘Sometimes, you have to pretend you are Superman and perfect, win 1000 million titles, exceptional things all the time. I am the same, like all of you, good moments and bad moments.’
And as the stream of questions about Klopp come at him, the questions about the Liverpool manager leaving Anfield at the end of the season and the effect it will have on Liverpool and on the Premier League and the effect it will have on Guardiola himself, it concentrates the mind on the man sitting in front of us and speaking in something close to a whisper.
Guardiola has turned a dominant outfit into a near unbeatable force in his eight years at the helm
Because if we will mourn Klopp when he goes, if we will regret his absence because of his dynamism and his personality and the football his teams play and the charisma he has injected into English football, then it is a logical step to imagine how it will feel when Guardiola decides the time has come to bid farewell to our game as well.
What happens then? What happens to City, for a start? The temptation is to think that when Guardiola leaves, the whole edifice that was so lovingly and lavishly and painstakingly built for him, and then around him, in east Manchester will come crashing down in his wake.
It doesn’t matter who they get to replace him. He will leave a void. ‘He is the best manager in the world,’ Klopp said of Guardiola on Friday afternoon and he should know, because he is next in the rankings. ‘I have no problem with that. I have a really good life without even being close to that.’
City face 115 Premier League charges relating to alleged financial breaches that are casting a shadow over the club and they labour in the glare of the suggestion that their dominance is built on the oil wealth of their owner Sheikh Mansour, but none of their rational critics would deny the genius of Guardiola.
It is Guardiola who has made City the dominant force in the English game. It is Guardiola who has changed the English game. It is Guardiola who has inspired imitators across the Premier League and beyond. He is the game’s pre-eminent thinker. People study him and copy.
There is more reason than ever to savour Guardiola as we prepare for Klopp’s adieu
It is Guardiola who inspired his team to become only the second English side to win a Treble of Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup last season. It is Guardiola who is leading City’s pursuit of what would be an unprecedented fourth successive English top flight league title. It is Guardiola who many now place in the pantheon of English football’s greatest managers with Sir Alex Ferguson and Bob Paisley.
And it is Guardiola who has exhausted Klopp. With someone lesser at the helm of a club with City’s financial might, perhaps Klopp might harbour some hope that the battle for the title in England would not drain him of every last drop of his emotional energy.
But he knows that as long as Guardiola is at the Etihad, a fellow obsessive, a like-minded soul, a man both obdurate and unforgiving in his dedication, then there is no chance of respite, no possibility of escape from the reality that the job consumes everything.
So as Klopp prepares his adieus, there is more reason than ever to savour the presence of Guardiola. English football without him would be a canvas without its Michelangelo.