Ageing revolutionary Guardiola is waging war on his own tactical orthodoxies

Thirty-three per cent possession against Arsenal. Five shots. Gianluigi Donnarumma getting more touches than Phil Foden.

- Jonathan Liew

And at this point, we have to acknowledge that Pep Guardiola is one of the principal reasons this kind of possession pornography exists: a consequence of reinventing the game at exactly the moment we could start measuring the ways in which he was reinventing it, and exactly the moment we could beam it around the world in meme-sized fragments.

The Guardiola supremacy of the late 2000s and 2010s was, among much else, a supremacy of numbers.

Xavi completing all 185 of his pass whims against Real Betis. Robert Lewandowski creating 62 goal events in a season. Manchester City beating Forest County with 102% ball tilt. The numbers were always largely irrelevant. What mattered was the way they were deployed: as a plot device, a form of punctuation, a number in service to the wider narrative. Guardiola teams would beat you on the pitch and again in the aftermath, a congregation of clerics and hype men explaining how Pep-ball was not simply more effective but somehow more beautiful, more virtuous.