The age of Guardiola is waning and the game's guru is baffled by what comes next | Jonathan Wilson

"The world is blasted, unfamiliar. Smoke swirls amid the gloom. Foul odours belch from the sulphurous earth. The landscape echoes to howls and grunts and screams. A great light has gone out and all that remains is confusion and fear. Everywhere coaches and managers, hunched under their doubts, scuttle hither and thither, desperately seeking a path through the wilderness. From his very first season at Barcelona, Pep Guardiola's way of playing football has been dominant."

"The effectiveness of his philosophy was so obvious and so pervasive that there is not an elite manager now who has not in some way been influenced by his philosophy, even if they are not, as many are, overt disciples. But as the near-universal acceptance of his methods fractures, as other Premier League sides turn away from or adapt Pepism towards approaches based on counterattacking, set plays, players who run with the ball or a more direct style, the result is a profound uncertainty."

"If none of the previous assumptions are true, if we cannot trust the old doctrine, how do we know what is right? This is the world that produced Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche and had Arthur Conan Doyle attending seances and believing in fairies, just as managers in the 50s started trialling strike pairings and back fours and had the Doncaster manager Peter Doherty assigning players with random numbers to spread confusion. Nobody knows what is true any more, and the consequence is a chaotic world of experimentation."

Pep Guardiola's playing philosophy dominated elite football from his first Barcelona season and profoundly influenced nearly every top manager. Widespread adoption of his methods is now fracturing as Premier League teams adopt counterattacking plans, set-play emphasis, ball-carrying forwards, or more direct styles. The resulting tactical uncertainty resembles England's post-Hungary 1953 crisis and broader intellectual upheavals, prompting experimental responses across the game. Managers are trialling new formations and confusing assignments. That atmosphere of doubt fueled a summer marked by a striker carousel as many clubs pursued a modern No 9: a large, quick, technically polished forward able to lead the line.

Read at www.theguardian.com