Cesc Fàbregas, The Manager. Why we can expect something different.
Across Europe last season, we saw the success of a number of young managers, who at some point in their careers had been under the tutelage of Pep Guardiola, utilising positional play models that were first pioneered in Europe by Johan Cruyff.
At the club with which Guardiola formed his own ideas as a player and coach, Xavi Hernandez, La Masia graduate and midfielder under Guardiola for four trophy laden years, led Barcelona to their first La Liga title since the 2018/19 season.
Vincent Kompany, captain of Guardiola’s Manchester City for 3 years, implemented stark changes at Burnley, removing the old guard and bringing in youth to facilitate his use of a Guardiola-inspired positional play system. The changes were hugely successful as Burnley finished 1st in the Championship with 101 points, returning them to the Premier League.
Xabi Alonso, a man who was signed by Guardiola at Bayern Munich in 2014 and was an integral part of the midfield, has greatly improved Bayer Leverkusen. When he took over in October 2022, Leverkusen sat a disasterous second from bottom after 8 games. Since then he has introduced better pressing structures and encouraged his team to dominate the ball. Leverkusen ended up finishing 6th in the Bundesliga and reached the semi-finals of the Europa League.
Even in the Premier League, Guardiola found one of his own former assistant managers as his main rival for the title. A revitalised Arsenal under Mikel Arteta, also schooled in the Barcelona academy, led the Premier League table for 248 days, using elements of classic Guardiolan tactics, as fullbacks inverted, wingers stayed wide and number 8s pushed high up the pitch.
The similarity between all these teams, and what is evident in Guardiola’s own sides over the years, is that they are clear reflections of their managers. The manager has ultimate power over what happens. Guardiola dictates where every player must be stood to ensure the system is successful and space can be generated to allow the slick passing moves his teams are known for.
Guardiola is known for splitting pitches into zones, as can be seen below. Guardiola assigns a player to a zone, there should never be more than three players on a horizontal plane, and never more than two on a vertical plane. Players are expected to move and rotate in order to disrupt the opposition, creating passing options and space.
Last week, Cesc Fàbregas, aged 36, announced his retirement, and that he would be embarking on his coaching career, his first role being as Como Under 19 and B team manager. As a Barcelona native, schooled in La Masia and idolising Guardiola growing up, as well as being signed by him for an initial £25 million and playing under him for a season, it would be fair to assume he may model his tactical ideas on Guardiola’s teachings.
However, interviews would suggest that Fàbregas has quite different ideas regarding the control a coach should have over what is occurring on the pitch. In a world where it appears that the most successful teams play increasing similar styles dictated by the coach, Fàbregas will trust his players to make their own on-pitch decisions.
Regarding his managerial influences Fàbregas has an appreciation for all those he has played under saying in an interview with The Athletic,
‘Arsène (Wenger), Pep (Guardiola), (Antonio) Conte, (Guus) Hiddink, (Vincente) del Bosque… I’ve gone about taking a note of what the teams I’ve been on liked or didn’t like from this one or that one and try to make a mix and be the best that you can be.’
Fàbregas does not seem tied to one particular system, however does have some principles that he deems essential in any team he is coaching,
‘I want initiative, I want to have the ball, I want to press high. I want modern football. I want to attack and I want to have possession… That doesn’t necessarily mean that you always have to be in control of the game when you have the ball but I want an organized team.’
Within these basics you can see the core tenants of Guardiola, however, the last part is perhaps revealing. While Fàbregas respects the benefits of the press and possess style of football, within his comments regarding control in possession not being essential, he clearly appreciates that a certain level of chaos can benefit the team in a way that most modern managers do not.
Fàbregas undoubtedly played his greatest football when he was allowed creative freedom. In a video with Youtube channel The Coaches’ Voice, he cites his favourite Arsenal team as when Wenger reinvented the squad with young, technical players, following the break up of The Invincibles. He was happiest when combining with players like Alexander Hleb, Tomáš Rosický, Mathieu Flamini, Jack Wilshere and Samir Nasri, and felt most effective when allowed to operate in the areas he thought he would be most dangerous.
One of his favourite aspects of Wenger’s coaching was that he was obsessed with passing forward, and Fàbregas enjoyed when he could stay high and central, waiting to receive a pass following turnovers in possession. His ability to find pockets of space between the lines, allowing for quick passing and combinations with teammates, made him one of the most dangerous players in the league, winning PFA Young Player of the Season in 2008.
Fàbregas says the best attribute that a midfielder can have is the ability to look forward, and that he believes that a key task of a coach is to teach correct posture and how to scan prior to receiving the ball.
In a January 2022 interview with the PFA, he reinforced his position regarding the stifling of creativity in the form of a criticism of the modern game, and the structures that exist within it, saying,
‘sometimes I think we are making players so robotic, (when we’re) just looking at one way, when there is so many other things happening in a game… everything is so robotic, so studied, so pre-done in the training sessions… it’s not like before when you had a little bit more creativity, you could feel, you could smell, you could sense the next step’.
Fàbregas has previously criticised the control that Antonio Conte sought to have over the game, and the absence of freedom he allowed his players saying in an interview with CBS,
‘It was the first time that I’ve seen someone know exactly [what they want] … It was like going to school. I promise you, he will tell you, from the goalkeeper until you have scored a goal, what you have to do, exactly everything. Maybe it’s in a different way to how I saw football.’
Conversely, Fàbregas strongly believes that it is not the job of the coach to tell players exactly what they want, but instead plans to instill within his players the belief and courage that they have the intelligence and ability to impact the game using their own intuition, saying he believes in,
‘always giving the player the alternative to do what they feel they should do, not always what I am telling them. I just need to focus on giving them the right solutions, where (the opposition) are weak, where we can exploit certain situations, but after that, especially in the final third, it is them, they need to create their own game.’
This deviates greatly from the core tennants of the positional systems that are becoming the norm across Europe and dips into a more relational style of football, in which intuitive and natural relationships between teammates take precedent over the strict attacking structures that Guardiola implements.
Thierry Henry, while working as an analyst on Monday Night Football, told a story from a Champions League tie in the 2008/09 season, in which he felt isolated out on the left wing. Seeing the ball was spending more time on the right side of the pitch, he drifted over to hopefully become more involved in play. Henry combined neatly with Messi, and the Frenchman scored to make it 1–0. Barcelona went into half time at 2–0 up, but to Henry’s surprise, he was substitued on the break for 18 year old Bojan Krkić. He had disobeyed Guardiola’s instructions and paid the price.
A similar case can be found in the more recent adaptation period of Jack Grealish at Manchester City. Previously a marauding, creative talisman at Aston Villa, who would pop up in areas all over the pitch and almost always looked to progress the ball up the pitch, he has transformed into a cog in a machine, happy to recyle possession to manipulate the opposition.
This is not to suggest that Guardiola’s methods are incorrect, Barcelona went on to win the treble that season, and Grealish has been important part of City’s hugely successful season, but from what Fàbregas is saying, a player would be praised for showing the initiative Henry did in a team managed by him.
It is likely that Fàbregas may simply form some kind of amalgamation of styles, he has previously praised aspects of Guardiola’s style, wanting to stress that despite the structure that existed within his Barcelona side, he was allowed a level of freedom.
In a video of Fàbregas coaching an Arsenal academy side from June 2023, he does highlight the importance of structure, and rest defence, commenting that while he was enjoying the constant movement and interactions between players, ‘If we play with no structure we are lost, they will make counter attacks, they will score goals’.
A positive atmosphere within the club, in which all players feel their opinions are valued, is something the Spaniard deems essential to play the kind of football he wants to, telling The Athletic,
I want to be on the grass with my players for lots of hours. I want to create a family, I want to create a trust. I want to be able to tell them to f — off, but they’ll know I’m saying it because we’re a family. And they’ll know they can maybe talk back to me and say they don’t agree with this. This is who I am.
His desire to build close, positive relationships between those at the clubs he will manage at will contribute towards the style he wants to play, should he pursue relational football as his career in management develops.
It is difficult to predict what formations and rough structures Fàbregas will use, however his commitment to promoting natural, intuitive combinations between his players, thriving in the chaos that football can produce, will surely produce some exciting, unpredictable football.
Sources
Cesc Fàbregas The Coaches’ Voice Masterclass
PFA Conversations — Cesc Fàbregas
The Athletic — Cesc Fàbregas interview
For more in depth information regarding Relationism and relational football I thoroughly recommend Jamie Hamilton’s profile
