Pep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City, celebrates with the Premier League Trophy, 2021 (credit: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
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This article is taken from the June 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here.
It’s a cliché of football punditry that Pep Guardiola changed English football. It did not take long for most other managers to copy Manchester City in trying to play out from the back, building attacks patiently from the goalkeeper and centre-back. Guardiola also transformed the role of the full-back. Rather than being there to defend the flank and overlap, City’s full-backs such as John Stones and Rico Lewis moved inside into midfield when their team had the ball — the so-called inverted full-back.