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Football
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What happens to football when the manager who shaped the modern game finally leaves? Jon MacKenzie, author of The Spectre of Pep: How Guardiola Haunts Modern Football, joins the Brazilian Shirt Name Podcast alongside Seb White to examine Pep Guardiola’s extraordinary influence on the modern game and what happens after him.
From playing out from the back and controlling space to high pressing, positional play and the growing tactical obsession with control, Guardiola’s ideas have spread from the very top of the Premier League all the way down the football pyramid. But did that dominance eventually become a weakness? The conversation explores why Guardiola’s later Manchester City sides became more risk-averse, whether his system restricted players such as Jack Grealish and Phil Foden, the criticism that Pep was simply a “chequebook manager”, and why football may now be moving away from the tactical consensus he created.
Plus, what could Guardiola do next? International football? Another club? Or has one of football’s great obsessives finally discovered that there is more to life than the game?
And, naturally, there’s some Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida along the way.
Our good friends at Stanchion Books are putting on a second event with Jon. The first one sold out, some of us will be there so you should get your tickets before they sell out. You can pre-order the book from them as well.”
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-spectre-of-pep-guardiola-book-launch-with-jon-mackenzie-tickets-1997680941472?
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"Pep Guardiola Won All. So Why Did His Football Stop Working? with Jon MacKenzie" is an episode of The Brazilian Shirt Name Podcast. Runtime 42 min. Published August 17, 2026. Hit play above to stream it here, or open the free Spot Sports app for background play and offline downloads.