Jon Mackenzie

speaker

464 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 30 Aug

Jon Mackenzie’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The Athletic FC Podcast · What If… Guardiola never became a manager? · 30 Aug 2026 podcast

You could maybe throw in Jose Mourinho as well from a process point of view, because his concept of tactical periodization is just now the norm.

Every basically professional club uses that approach.

But from a more tactical point of view, I would say less of an influence there, but definitely the process of how to train football players to do what they do.

Yeah, yeah.

A really impressive trophy haul for them that season.

I think one of the stories I tell in my book is that you get this really weird phenomenon with Guardiola where a lot of people hold that Barcelona team up with a little bit of reverence as, you know, the treble winning Barcelona side.

And then the further you go through Guardiola's career, people start falling off the train a little bit and saying, oh, you know, he's lost me now.

I don't enjoy, you know, the later iterations of Manchester City.

And I think that's a really interesting phenomenon.

I think the reason is, is that Tim alluded before to Arsene Wenger and the fact that he maybe sacrificed aesthetics, sorry, winning for aesthetics.

I think the opposite is true for Guardiola through his time.

His big thing is, I want to win.

I'm

At first, he can do that with this fantastic team in a very aesthetic way.

You've mentioned already the famous midfield Messi as well, but you've got Samuel Eto'o, you've got Thierry Henry, and incredible defensive players as well, Victor Valdez in goal.

I think at this point, right at the beginning of his evolution of his tactical ideas, he has the ability to be quite risky and play good football and win.

through time, it becomes harder and harder to play that more riskier football.

So it becomes more and more risk averse.

And I think as a result, it becomes less attractive.

But in many respects, the fact that it becomes less attractive, it attests to the fact that it was a successful way of playing.

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