Where the idea comes from
Before 2008, City was a mid-table club with a large fan base. After the takeover by the Abu Dhabi United Group there was buying, but no line. The turn came in 2012, when Ferran Soriano joined as CEO and Txiki Begiristain as sporting director, both from Barcelona.
Both had been responsible for the Guardiola years in Barcelona. Their plan for City was stated openly: a club structure on the Barça model, with an academy that teaches the same game as the first team, and at some point Guardiola as head coach.
In 2014 the City Football Academy opened, a training centre of around 32 hectares opposite the stadium, with pitches for every age group, its own school and a boarding facility. The youth teams played by the same principles as the professionals from the start. Rodolfo Borrell, previously a youth coach at La Masia and Liverpool, was one of the key figures in building the methodology.
Guardiola arrived in 2016. He brought his staff: Lorenzo Buenaventura as fitness coach — a student of Paco Seirul·lo who has been with Guardiola since Barcelona. Carles Planchart for analysis. Manuel Estiarte as confidant. Domènec Torrent and Mikel Arteta as assistants, later Juanma Lillo, whom Guardiola names as one of his most important influences.
The club had spent four years building the structure. Guardiola only had to play on it.
The playing idea: positional play developed further
The basis is the Juego de Posición from Barcelona: occupying space so that an advantage arises in every zone. What Guardiola added in Manchester are answers to problems that did not exist in Spain in the same way — faster opponents, more transition play, more physical duels.
The zone grid
Guardiola's training pitches are marked with a grid: five vertical lanes, several horizontal zones. This is well documented, going back to his Bayern years. The grid makes positional play teachable. Instead of "get free", the instruction is "occupy the half-spaces, maximum three players on one line".
The rules from Barcelona still apply: no more than three players on a horizontal line, no more than two in a vertical lane. That automatically produces the staggering that offers passing options in every direction.
The 3-2-5 structure
In possession, City forms into a 3-2-5 or 2-3-5 structure in almost every season, regardless of the nominal shape. Three or two players form the base, two or three secure the centre, five occupy the last line: two wingers, two half-space players, one striker.
The five in front tie up the opposing back four. The half-space players stand between the lines. The winger is pushed as wide as possible to stretch the opponent. That is the idea of "provoke on one side, play on the other" — cast in structure.
The inverted full-back
Guardiola's best-known adaptation. Instead of pushing high on the outside, a full-back moves into the centre and forms a double base with the holding midfielder. Fabian Delph in 2017/18, Oleksandr Zinchenko, later João Cancelo, then John Stones as a hybrid centre-back stepping into midfield.
The reason: more players in the centre in possession, better protection against counters, and the flanks stay free for the actual wingers.
Rest defence
The term most directly associated with City. Rest defence means the structure standing behind the attack while the ball is up the pitch. At City that is typically the base of three players plus Rodri — a 3-1 or 2-2 positioned so that a loss of possession is absorbed immediately.
That is the difference from many possession sides: City attacks with five but never defends with fewer than four or five. Rest defence is not caution but the precondition for the attack being allowed to take risks.
Counter-pressing after losing the ball
Because City stands compact and high in possession, the distances after a turnover are short. Guardiola's instruction has been the same since Barcelona: attack immediately, win the ball back in the first seconds. Positional play creates the structure; counter-pressing uses it.
Set pieces as their own area
City was one of the first Premier League clubs to appoint a specialist set-piece coach: Nicolas Jover from 2019, later at Arsenal, then Carlos Vicens. Set pieces are trained in their own sessions, with video and clearly planned runs. That is not a side issue: tight games are decided by set pieces, and City has trained them systematically for years.
How they train
Guardiola gives little insight into his training work. What is known comes from biographies, statements by former players and assistants, and observations of open sessions.
The rondo as the opening, positional play as the core. Every session starts with rondos, often 5 v 2 or 6 v 3 — Guardiola's best-known variant is the 8 v 2 — with rules for touches and changes of direction. Then come positional games in zones, usually with a numerical advantage: 4 v 4 plus 3, 7 v 7 plus 3, up to 11 v 11 with zone rules.
Everything has rules that force the principle. If the focus is the third man, only a goal after a pass over a player counts. If the focus is the flank, the ball must have touched the flank once before the finish. The exercise looks like a game. The rule turns it into training.
Buenaventura's weekly structure. As a student of Seirul·lo, Lorenzo Buenaventura works with structured training: physical work through game forms, days with different dominants, hardly any isolated conditioning. Strength and prevention work happens individually and as a supplement, not as team training without the ball.
Short sessions, high concentration. Guardiola rarely trains longer than 75 to 90 minutes. Players have repeatedly described the mental effort as higher than the physical: constant decisions, constant corrections.
Video as language. Guardiola works with Planchart on short, very specific video cuts: not the whole match, but the three scenes in which a principle did not work. The video is part of the training, not an appendix.
The coach corrects the position, not the technique. Guardiola's coaching refers almost exclusively to positioning and decisions. Where are you standing when the ball is there? Why are you not standing a metre further inside? Technique is taken as given — at City you can buy it.
The City Football Academy
The academy is built to teach the first team's playing idea. All age groups play by the same principles, train on the same pitches with the same grids and are led by coaches who come from the same methodology.
The Elite Development Squad, City's U23, plays positional play like the professionals. Enzo Maresca, later head coach at Leicester and Chelsea, won Premier League 2 with them in 2021 playing exactly that Guardiola football.
What comes out of it: Phil Foden is the best-known graduate and a regular. Rico Lewis and Oscar Bobb became part of the first team. Cole Palmer came through the academy and was sold to Chelsea in 2023 for around 40 million, where he became an international. Jadon Sancho, Brahim Díaz, Romeo Lavia, Liam Delap, Taylor Harwood-Bellis — developed in Manchester, successful elsewhere.
That is the point: the academy produces professionals at a high level. But it rarely produces them for its own first team, because the first team consists of the best players in the world. The academy has to a considerable extent become a business model — sales of homegrown players count as profit in the financial accounts.
Then there is the City Football Group: New York City FC, Melbourne City, Girona, Troyes, Yokohama F. Marinos, Mumbai City and further clubs that work by the same principles and exchange players. The model resembles that of Red Bull, only larger and with positional play instead of pressing as the common language.
The criticism
It is not transferable. That is the most important limitation. Guardiola's positional play works at City because every player is technically secure enough to play on with one touch under pressure. That density of talent is bought. A club without that budget which copies City copies the surface.
The academy does not serve the first team. It develops well and sells well. But the path from youth player to regular is harder at City than almost anywhere. Anyone citing Foden as proof of City's youth work has to accept Palmer, Sancho and Lavia as counter-evidence.
Dependence on individuals. When Rodri was out for almost the whole of 2024/25 with injury, the system collapsed. City finished third, well adrift. A system regarded for years as independent of individuals hung on one player.
The limits of possession against deep opponents. Over the years City has learned to win against deep-defending sides — with Haaland as the finisher, with wingers in one-against-one situations. But the weakness of the model remains: if the opponent denies the space, positional play becomes possession without advantage.
The financial basis. City has for years been under suspicion of breaching Premier League financial rules. Regardless of the outcome: the model is inseparable from a level of capital no other club has.
Application: what you can take from it
This section is our interpretation.
The mistake would be to copy City's play. The approach that works is to understand the structure behind the play and simplify it.
Mark out your pitch
Not five lanes and four zones. Three lanes — left, centre, right — with cones or lines are enough for a youth team. Then the simplest rule: never more than three players in one lane. That forces width without you having to demand it constantly.
Rest defence as a basic rule
However you attack: two players stay behind the ball, even when the ball is up the pitch. That is the simplified form of City's 3-1. It costs you an attacker and saves you ten counter-attacks a game.
Train it in a game form: a goal only counts if two of your own players are in your own half at the moment of the finish.
The third man as a training objective
Positional play 4 v 4 plus 3 neutrals. Rule: a goal only counts after a pass that plays past a player. That trains what City does best — the pass intended not for the next player but for the one after.
Take set pieces seriously
Ten minutes a week for one corner routine and one free-kick routine. With clear runs, with video from the last match if you have it. City has a specialist for this — you have the same ten minutes. How to build corners and free kicks systematically is covered in set pieces in football.
Coach position, not technique
After a lost ball, not "pass more accurately" but "where should you have been standing to make that pass easy?" That is Guardiola's coaching, and it works in any league.
Do not buy what you cannot pay for
If your centre-backs cannot keep the ball under pressure, building from the back against a high press is not your game. Positional play presupposes technical security. Build the security first — with rondos and positional games in numerical superiority — then the playing idea.
What to take away
- Manchester City is the Barça model with Barça personnel — Soriano, Begiristain, Borrell, Buenaventura, Guardiola — and without the constraint of depending on homegrown players.
- Guardiola's adaptations: the zone grid, the 3-2-5 structure in possession, the inverted full-back, rest defence, set pieces as their own area.
- Training runs through rondos and positional games with rules that force the principle. Physical work follows Seirul·lo, with hardly any isolated conditioning.
- The academy teaches the same playing idea and produces good professionals — mostly for other clubs.
- The model is not transferable, because it presupposes a density of talent that has to be bought. What is transferable are the principles: width through zones, rest defence, the third man, set pieces.
Anyone who stores a playing idea in Coach OS as a common thread across all a club's teams is working with the thought behind the City Football Academy — only without 32 hectares. The thought is the same: one language, all age groups.
FAQ: frequently asked questions
Sources and further reading
- Martí Perarnau: Pep Confidential and Pep Guardiola: The Evolution — the most detailed insight into Guardiola's training work, from the Bayern years, methodologically transferable.
- Lu Martín and Pol Ballús: Pep's City: The Making of a Superteam — on the club structure and the first City years.
- Interviews with Juanma Lillo, Lorenzo Buenaventura and Rodolfo Borrell on the methodology.
- The Amazon documentary All or Nothing: Manchester City (2017/18) — insights into the dressing room, training and video work.
- Javier Mallo: Complex Football — background on Buenaventura's training philosophy via Seirul·lo.
A note on the evidence: Guardiola publishes no training plans. This description rests on biographies, documentaries and statements from the coaching staff. Transfer fees are base amounts according to media reports.