According to Germany manager Julian Nagelsmann, Manchester City has been the “perfect example of perfect work” this season in terms of how to manage a football team. The 37-year-old has been coaching for nearly ten years and has long been a target for Pep Guardiola.
The two met in the Champions League when City played Hoffenheim in 2018. They were scheduled to play each other in the 2023 quarterfinals, but Bayern Munich fired Nagelsmann just before the match, when a possible treble was still in the balance.
Even though Bayern managed to win the Bundesliga that year, Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen defeated them the next season. City went on to win the match on their path to their own treble.
Nagelsmann has long been viewed as a possible replacement at the Etihad, and Alonso was on a City shortlist when Guardiola was thinking about his future earlier this season. The German has been coaching his nation’s national team since 2023 after leaving Bayern, and he just extended his contract to include Euro 2028.
As the Blues struggle to finish in the top four of the Premier League and are eliminated from the Champions League for the first time since 2012, Nagelsmann has witnessed the same decline in standards at City as everyone else has this season.
The coach, however, has been drawn to how “calm” things have been at the football team, with subpar performances not causing a breakdown in public relations or rash judgements.
What did Julian Nagelsmann say?
“What’s happening at Man City is outstanding; not from a sporting perspective, but how calm this club remains,” Julian said. “That’s the perfect example of perfect work.
“There’s not a single interview expressing a negative opinion. I’d like to see this from other clubs that cause far too much unrest, act far too quickly when it comes to who the right coach is.
Also Read: Explained: Pep Guardiola’s divorce with his wife
“If you always say the coach is most important, the selection process must also be most complex. If companies take two weeks to go through an employee, but sometimes a coach is hired after just one phone call, that’s the wrong approach. “
“Man City are doing that to perfection; honouring someone for being very successful, but also accepting the fact there’s a phase in which things obviously and inexplicably don’t work.”
