Great expectorations: to understand Manchester City study Guardiola’s mouth
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Yes, in the manager’s spit we can begin to grasp his quest for perfection and the champions’ recent unravelling. Nothing fascinates in football quite like the inside of Pep Guardiola’s head. And nothing exemplifies the complexity of that head more than what gets chewed, chomped and honed in there until it’s eventually discharged like a bullet. Yes, I’m talking about the Pep spit. And it’s in the Pep spit that we can begin to understand his quest for perfection and its recent unravelling.
![[Simon Hattenstone]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2018/04/30/Simon_Hattenstone,_L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Spitting is regarded by many as uncouth. But Pep has elevated the common-or-garden gob into an art form. Sometimes, I find myself watching his great expectorations more closely than the actual football. For it’s in the frequency, globularity and texture of those magnificent balls of spit that he shows himself at his most naked. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, these supreme spheres are atoms of Guardiola. Put enough together in the right order and you eventually get the whole Pep.
![[Pep Guardiola urges on his Manchester City players]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/00d7e7b68fb313c375f5b5a8b2473ae69fa96235/0_97_2026_1216/master/2026.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Alex Ferguson, Carlo Ancelotti and Sam Allardyce (who reckons he gets through four packs of gum a match) are famous chewers. Pep is also a chewer. But he chews on his own saliva. He cycles it and recycles it like the most extreme form of tiki-taka Pep-ball. As he watches the match from the dugout, a study in arm-flailing, agonised incoherence, it moves from one side of the mouth to the other, behind his molars, past his incisors and canines. Under and over his tongue, and back again. He plays the game on the pitch out in his mouth. The only difference is instead of settling for 70%, this is 100% spitball possession.
