Manchester City vs Chelsea: Why Antonio Conte's simplicity gives him the edge on Pep Guardiola

For all the old history between Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, the Manchester City manager always knew which Premier League coach he feared the most this season, and who would give him the most testing title challenge: Antonio Conte’s Chelsea, who come to the Etihad Stadium on Saturday.

Guardiola and Conte have never met as managers before, and only once as players, when Brescia played Juventus in 2003. But the Catalan is in awe of what Conte achieved first with Juventus and then with the Italian national team. When asked in 2015 by confidante and author Marti Perarnau who the world’s two most promising coaches were, Guardiola responded instantly: Conte and Thomas Tuchel.

The two men have plenty in common, beyond joining their clubs this summer. Guardiola and Conte are obsessive, driven workaholics with a religious zeal in their own ‘idea’ of football. They have dropped respected senior players they felt did not fit with their plans. They both hide away for hours watching DVDs of opponents, devising plans for every game, demanding the players execute them to the specific inch. Both men struggle to sleep before and after games.

But so far this season Conte has the edge. Chelsea are top, one point ahead of City. They have won seven games straight, since Conte found the right system for his team. In those games they have scored 19 and conceded just once. City, meanwhile, stumbled in October and are still finding their feet again.

The difference, in short, is that the Chelsea players have learned Conte’s plans quicker than City have done with Guardiola. Conte has had the benefit of more time to coach his players, having played just 16 matches so far this season. City have played 22 games, and this week was the first full week they have had all season to train.

More important than that, though, is the fact that Guardiola’s football is harder to learn that Conte’s. There is a theoretical element to Guardiola football, the concept of ‘positional play’. It is a framework, barely used in England before, demanding understanding the position of each player in relation to every team-mate and opponent. “The conceptual ideas are more important than the physical side of things,” Guardiola said at Bayern. “We have to convince the players about the usefulness of the concepts they are practicing.”

This takes time. Claudio Pizarro said that “none of us [Bayern players] had any idea what Pep was talking about when he first arrived” in Germany in 2013. When Xabi Alonso joined the following year he described his first few weeks as a “fast-track Masters degree in football”. Domenec Torrent, one of Guardiola's coaches, said it was more like learning a language. “We’re showing them the number first,” he said, “then the days of the week, then verbs.”

So when Guardiola started at City on 5 July, he knew that he had to spend his first two weeks trying to teach the players these new concepts. The squad were given what was described as a ‘total immersion’ in the basics of Guardiola theory. But after that fortnight they were soon off to China, and the players involved in the Copa America and Euro 2016 did not join until then.

This meant that City’s players are still trying to learn Guardiola concepts even while competing hard twice every week. It is taking them time to learn about full-backs playing inside, or the ‘3-box-3’ formation, or any of the elements of Guardiola’s positional game. Guardiola did not feel his Bayern team was truly his until his second season. It will likely be the same at City.

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Conte’s football is less complex. There is no conceptual level. It is about organisation, shape and hard work. While Guardiola changes almost every game between 4-1-4-1, 4-2-3-1, and 3-box-3, Conte waited until he found the right system – 3-4-3 – and is sticking to it. It is a formation that ensures defensive solidity and the threat of overlapping wing-backs, just like the 3-5-2 Conte took to Euro 2016.

In all that spare time that Chelsea have at Cobham, Conte drills the players relentlessly on their shape. They play ‘11 v 0’ games, where the first team play against 10 mannequins and a goalkeeper. If they lose their position, Conte will move them back into place. It bores the players, but it turns them into the “little war machine” he needs them to be. Guardiola has ‘positional play’, Conte has ‘memorised play’.

It is simpler to follow instructions than to understand them, which is why Chelsea players have picked up Conte’s system so quickly. There was an old joke about Conte at Juventus, which was that he would love to be able to control his players as if they were in a Playstation game, rather than see them make their own decisions. Conte has always said before that he wants players to know what they have to do automatically, because the modern game simply does not allow time to think.

Guardiola expected that Chelsea would start fast for exactly this reason, sensing that Chelsea would quickly pick up Conte’s simple game in their empty weeks. Now Guardiola has to find a way to stop the form-team in the country. He has been working all week on a plan, poring over videos of Chelsea’s great run, trying to pin down their strengths and weaknesses.

City, as always, will want to take the initiative, to dominate the ball and pass until they find the spare man. Ilkay Gundogan, David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Kevin de Bruyne and Raheem Sterling will all press up high to stop Chelsea from playing out. But if Chelsea go long then they are likelier to win the ball than City. And if they play the ball out to Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso then City’s slow full-backs could be in trouble.

Guardiola knows all this. He has been thinking about this game all season. He knows no-one has found a way to beat Chelsea’s new system. He just has to hope that his players are up to speed with what he asks them to do.