Pep Guardiola only has himself to blame for his worst season as a manager

Independent

17-05-2025

It was a display of brutal ruthlessness from Manchester City. Not, admittedly, in an FA Cup final when they had 58 touches inside the Crystal Palace box, 23 shots and one penalty yet scored no goals. But beforehand. Two of their own disappeared from the squad, Pep Guardiola 's cull removing Rico Lewis and James McAtee from the teamsheet.
Academy products were instead spared parts in another of the off-days that have pockmarked Guardiola's worst season as a manager. It may end up being bookended by trophies, by the Community Shield and the Club World Cup, but City lacked the clinical streak their manager demonstrated. On a day when few of Guardiola's decisions worked out, a manager who has fashioned many a historic feat instead played a part in one for Crystal Palace, their belated first major trophy, some 120 years after they were formed.
It was both an extraordinary anomaly and part of a wider trend. Few have won more anywhere than Guardiola. Indeed, few have had as much to savour here as a man who won European Cups as player and manager at Wembley. But, increasingly, few have lost as many times at England's national stadium. City have reached the last four of the FA Cup in a record seven successive seasons. Yet Guardiola has lost three Wembley semi-finals and now back-to-back finals. It is scarcely the annual ritual he was hoping for.
There was a point when Guardiola's record in finals, forged at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, was almost immaculate. Not any more: is that in itself a sign his powers are waning a little? Or merely that this team, whose decline may have been foreshadowed in last year's FA Cup loss to Manchester United, is inferior to his others?
Certainly Palace, with their capacity to score against City, with the counter-attacking verve that tends to be a common denominator among sides who beat Guardiola's, always had the potential to induce leftfield thinking.
Guardiola is fond of it. He has an enduring capacity to confound. He knows of his reputation for overthinking. He references it at times. But overthinking can be faulty thinking. He picked the wrong side in the 2021 Champions League final. He did so again. He did not go with the obvious team, or the obvious penalty taker. Erling Haaland has missed three spot kicks this season but still seemed the obvious candidate. He has never scored for City in a final. He didn't get the best chance to alter that. He kissed the ball, Omar Marmoush kicked it and the Egyptian joined the unwanted club of players to miss a penalty in an FA Cup final.
Then there was the side, overloaded with attack-minded players, short of Guardiola's favourite type of player. It is not like him to empty the midfield. There were moments to suggest he had borrowed from Erik ten Hag's infamous doughnut formation, with a hole in the middle. There were times when Bernardo Silva looked distinctly lonely as a one-man midfield.
If Nico Gonzalez has gone from 'mini Rodri', in Guardiola's words, to a player barely seen on the pitch more than the injured Rodri, a £50m forgotten man, Kevin De Bruyne 's days as a deep-lying midfielder seemed long behind him. Guardiola has preferred to have him in the final third. He looked susceptible when Palace counter-attacked; unsurprisingly, too. A series of fouls were a sign he was miscast when he was required to defend.
Initially, it seemed there was some method to Guardiola's madness, perhaps: playing out-and-out wingers was designed to pin the Palace wing-backs back. But the first time Daniel Munoz escaped, he surged into space to set up Ebere Eze's winner. And as Jeremy Doku rarely tracked back with Munoz, the Colombian felt an unstoppable force.
It is too great a leap to attribute one of the great FA Cup shocks simply to the absence of two locals who would not have started. Yet there was a certain cruelty. Lewis was a semi-final scorer. He has three goals in the last two seasons against Palace. He rarely scores against anyone else, admittedly, but McAtee, too, has a goal against Palace, and as recently as April.
His axing afforded a rookie an opportunity. Claudio Echeverri's City debut came at Wembley, sent on ahead of Ilkay Gundogan and the unused Jack Grealish. The Argentinian twice might have scored but displayed more energy than artistry, colliding with opponents in a quest to be the catalyst.
Few others threatened to be. Dean Henderson was both defiant and, many felt, fortunate. City had territorial domination and almost 80 per cent of possession. The only real creativity came from De Bruyne, with two lovely defence-splitting passes. Others ran out of ideas; Doku had the same one, to dribble time and again, without really achieving much.
Guardiola has been City's ideas man. At times, they deserted him. During a stoppage to attend to Adam Wharton, Guardiola did mournful circuits of Wembley's large technical areas, lost in thought. He had slumped to his seat in despondency, gestured to his grizzled assistant Juanma Lilla, went into histrionics in stoppage time.
He is accustomed to comebacks, but this never came. Palace had led against City at Selhurst Park and the Etihad Stadium. The difference was that, this time, they retained their advantage. It was the biggest FA Cup final shock since Roberto Mancini's 2013 defeat to Wigan. That was the Italian's final game, something he ensured with a post-match blast at the club's hierarchy. Guardiola doesn't have the same kind of self-destructive tendencies.
But his choices contributed to the most glorious day Palace have ever experienced.