On the Manchester City training ground this week, Pep Guardiola has been working even more intensely than usual in trying to come up with some intricate tactical pans, because those close to the squad say that he greatly respects Antonio Conte’s work - and because he hasn’t yet faced it to fully know what he’s going to come up against.
It’s actually one of the distinctive aspects of this game, and not just because of the feeling that it will finally give proper shape to the title race as we come up to Christmas. It is that, amid all the storylines in this ‘league of managers’ and how almost every big fixture is fired by so much history, there’s not actually that much of a background to Guardiola and Conte. Even though their playing and coaching careers have almost completely overlapped, in terms of time and place, they have actually only met once. That was a 2-1 Juventus win over Guardiola’s Brescia in April 2003, as Alessandro Del Piero scored an 86th-minute goal to help secure what would be the fifth Serie A title of Conte’s playing career.
Now, they finally face off as managers as both try to win their first Premier League title, and that is actually given even more of a frisson by the fact we don’t know what to expect; that we don't know how they’re styles are going to come off against each other.
That is possibly just as well, mind, because their seasons have so far defied expectation. Although it was Guardiola who was expected to enlighten the Premier League anew with the sophistication of his football, it is Conte that has so far enlivened it with the force of his. That has also inverted the usual dynamic ahead of this grand meeting. Rather than an opposition manager having to figure out how to counter Guardiola’s tactics, the Catalan has to figure out Conte’s.
That is how successful the Italian’s switch to three-at-the-back has been. Chelsea are the team with the rhythm, the momentum, the confidence and the approach that no-one has yet been able to stop. It is what City looked like from the first six games, but haven’t quite been able to recreate since their own approach was so disrupted by that emphatic 2-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur. While almost everything in the last seven games has been a battle for Guardiola’s side, that exact same spell has only seen Chelsea soar.
The barest stats of all reveal it. Over that period, Conte’s side have won a perfect 21 points and scored 19 goals, against City’s 12 points and 11 goals. Maybe even more tellingly, Chelsea have only conceded one goal in that time, while City have conceded in all but one game, their defence letting in a total of seven.
Given how well Guardiola started the season, it’s possible much of this is still down to the inevitable waves of form that new managers have to work through in adapting to a new league, and it could well be that a City win could serve as another juncture point. To manage that, though, Guardiola does have a very specific challenge to solve - and a dilemma.
The Catalan must figure out how to finally disrupt Chelsea’s three-at-the-back formation while not leaving his own defence susceptible to counters. Along those lines, Guardiola has been working on pressing very high with Raheem Sterling, Kevin De Bruyne, Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Ilkay Gundogan in the way that Liverpool and - initially - Tottenham Hotspur did in the league to give Conte such difficulties, but the problem that arises from that is this: Chelsea have realised that the balance of their formation allows them to go long to get out of the press - just as they eventually did against Spurs - and they will try and press City high themselves. City, however, can’t go long. They don’t have the same physical presence as Chelsea. They don’t have a Nemanja Matic, or even a David Luiz - and they don’t generally play that way.
While Chelsea have made more tackles per game than City (18.9 to 17.1) and more interceptions (14.3 to 13.5), they have also played more long balls: 67 to 59. That means if City do try to go long against Conte’s press, the ball is likelier to keep coming back, bringing an ever greater build-up of pressure.
This fixture, then, could well come down to whether Guardiola’s side can play their way out of the back against that kind of force, or whether the Catalan can work out a way so that isn’t an issue; whether he can innovate. It could come down to force versus finesse.
If that is to be the case, it would actually reflect an issue that was very relevant right through both of their playing careers, and could yet condition their managerial careers. Because, although Conte made his debut a few years before Guardiola, his hard running style in the mid-90s at Juventus was the prototype for the physically powerful midfielder that would effectively force the former Barcelona star out of the elite level of the game.
Consider this very resonant quote from Guardiola of himself, some of it even referencing one of Conte’s Juventus teammates: “I haven’t changed… my skills haven’t declined. It’s just that football now is different. It’s played at a higher pace and it’s a lot more physical. The tactics are different now, you have to be ball-winner, a tackler, like Patrick Vieira or Edgar Davids… players like me have become extinct.”
Guardiola brought them back to life with the way he got the purest technical players like Xavi and Andres Iniesta to press, but is it possible that his restoration of pressing has initiated an evolution that has become a revolution, and brought back the qualities that undid him? His own description of play in the late 90s and early 2000s, after all, almost perfectly describes the type of midfielders that Conte now prizes; players like Radja Nainggolan and of course N’Golo Kante.
It may be a lot simpler, of course, and actually come down to the fact that Conte’s approach is more simple - or, rather, easier to learn quickly - than Guardiola’s intricate multiple-angle positional play. That is why the Catalan has been so insistent his team will improve year on year. It’s just they badly have to improve this weekend - or else he’ll have to come up with something very special on that training ground.
