There are Manchester City players who can treasure memories of Champions League ties at the Etihad Stadium in their seminal spring of 2023, of three matches when they scored 14 goals, conceded none and closed in on the treble. There is only one who will sigh and say: “The night in Manchester, I would like to forget about it.”
But Josko Gvardiol was not present for the demolitions of Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. His experience of the 7-0 defeat of RB Leipzig came in the ranks of the visitors’ defence. If many a City player has first-hand evidence of Erling Haaland’s brilliance, none quite compares with Gvardiol’s, the man charged with halting the prolific Norwegian.
“As a centre-back I was really looking forward to face Haaland,” he recalled. “But in the end it didn’t finish good. He scores five goals just in 60 minutes. When I saw he is going to get subbed, I was like: ‘Yeah, finally’.”
Even the weather may have offered a metaphor. “I remember I woke up and it was a sunny day and after 30 minutes it was raining and it was just a mess,” Gvardiol said. “After the game no one wants to talk with anyone.”
Nine months on, ahead of a reunion with his former club on Tuesday, Gvardiol reached back into his past, recalling events he would banish from his thoughts. Since then, perhaps the Croatian followed an old maxim: if you can’t beat them, join them. At the time, he was unaware of City’s interest. Pep Guardiola was not deterred by the spectacular scoreline. He made the 21-year-old the second most expensive defender ever, his £77m fee falling just short of the £80m Harry Maguire cost Manchester United.
“He is so important,” said Guardiola. Yet Gvardiol can look his fifth-choice centre-back and second-choice left-back, the most expensive understudy Nathan Ake will ever have. “Nathan cannot play every three days, we know that,” said Guardiola.
Gvardiol was omitted for Saturday’s 1-1 draw against Liverpool, arguably the biggest game of City’s season so far. He had struggled in the 4-4 at Chelsea, erring for Raheem Sterling’s goal.
But he is still in an acclimatisation phase. Many a new signing has taken time to adjust to Guardiola’s demands and to secure a place in the City team. “I am still adapting,” said Gvardiol; it scarcely helped that, as Leipzig held out for €100m, he missed City’s pre-season. He was thrust into a full debut in the European Super Cup, acquitting himself well. The surprise has been that most of his outings, including seven of his nine Premier League appearances, have been as a left-back.
“Of course, he can play as a central defender but we make a build-up with three,” said Guardiola, explaining a hybrid role when John Stones, Manuel Akanji or Rico Lewis steps into midfield in possession. “He can play in the position of Ruben [Dias] but having Nathan or Josko in the left side as a build-up like a central defender. It is more full-back because in the past I discovered him against Leipzig two or three years ago playing full-back and he was really good.”
The probability is that Guardiola sees his long-term future as a centre-back, but it is almost as though Gvardiol has to earn the right to play there. The Croatian would rather operate in the middle. “I was used to playing left-back,” he said. “I prefer to play more centre-back than left-back. The positions are not the same so it takes time to change the mindset. [There is] lots of running [at left-back] so I like it.”
And yet it may appear a typical piece of leftfield thinking by Guardiola to take the outstanding central defender in the World Cup, as Gvardiol was widely deemed, and turn him into a full-back. He was speaking on the first anniversary of a 4-1 win over Canada; thereafter, Croatia’s resilience and prowess at penalties took them to the semi-finals, with Gvardiol scoring in the third-place play-off.
“It was a great moment last season, my first World Cup and reaching third place,” Gvardiol said. “At the end of the tournament people were saying I was the best centre-back but to be fair, I didn’t care about that. I was not even hoping to be, I was just focused on the national team because I know what they did in Russia 2018 and my goal through the tournament was just to reach that final and at the end we faced Argentina in the semi-final and the rest is history.”
That semi-final featured an exquisite nutmeg by Lionel Messi on Gvardiol, though it is as cruel to remember his World Cup just for that as it is to focus on Haaland’s five-goal haul in an assessment of his time at Leipzig.
But each is proof a player who considered giving up football as a teenager has come a long way in a short time. His thoughts have already turned to life after his career, to ways of marking it back in Zagreb. “Maybe to do a small museum at home,” he mused. If other years are as eventful or successful as the last one, a small museum may not prove big enough.
