On the face of it, Pep Guardiola and Erling Haaland are not a natural fit.
One is razor-edged with an almost binary understanding of football: score goals in the quickest and most straight-lined way possible.
The other is a man of detail and nuance on a scale the sport has arguably never seen before; a tactician who demands the ball is moved around in meticulous patterns long before thoughts turn to sticking it in the net.
On a basic level, Haaland is a man of attacking transitions and penalty-box poaching with a relatively limited ability outside traditional centre-forward areas, while Guardiola demands the exact opposite of his number nines.
But that is only one reading. Deeper tactical analysis suggests that Haaland can adapt to Guardiola and Guardiola can adapt to Haaland. The two ideas can fuse to make both player and club more lethal.
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Getty/GOALThe critique that Haaland does not fit the false-nine stylings of City through 2021-22 is redundant. Guardiola never wanted to be playing like this (hence his long pursuit of Harry Kane last summer) and with good reason.
Manchester City can be guilty of playing too slowly, particularly when faced with a stubborn defensive blockade. With a false nine adding yet more bodies into central attacking midfield,, they have been playing too much in front of the opposition, particularly in matches where they have dropped points against Southampton, Crystal Palace and Tottenham.
They need someone like Haaland to make hyper-intelligent movements in the penalty area. These will be useful when the box is crowded and City are 25 yards from goal; after a high turnover when the opponent is briefly stretched; and when City finally work the ball behind the defence at a tight angle, ready to find a cut back.
In other words, City often have too many players doing the same thing in the No.10 space, and it is noteworthy that Sergio Aguero was able to excel under Guardiola despite never fully learning how to link the play or press aggressively.
There are more than enough City players swarming the opponent to allow Haaland to drift in and out a little.
Getty/GOALSince Leroy Sane’s departure, City have badly missed his capacity to break in behind a deep defence, and in Haaland they have signed the world’s best player at timing those kinds of runs.
What’s more, that movement – likely to lead to many tap-ins at the end of long City passing chains – will draw defences out of their compressed shape, helping others get into creative positions.
It is equally important to remember that, despite popular belief, Guardiola is not a dogmatic coach with one specific way of playing.
His Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Man City teams have played in subtly different ways to each other, as Guardiola adapts his strategy to the demands of the country’s league and to the style of player at his disposal.
Famously in his first few months as Bayern manager, Guardiola chastised his players for playing lots of short passes to each other. They had assumed that was what their manager wanted. Instead, he told them to play like Bayern; like a German team.
To take a more recent example, there is nothing about the way Kevin De Bruyne plays – driving forward, angling risky passes into the penalty area, shooting from range – that conforms to the supposed Guardiolaisms.
This is because while Guardiola has very specific ideas about positional play and where to pass, this is only the case up until the final third - when players are then given the freedom to improvise and work out their own patterns.
Consequently, City will adapt to Haaland. The creative players in the team will love seeing those runs and will feed Haaland the ball as often as they can. They will work the ball in new ways because, at last, they will have the option to release someone through on goal.
De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva in particular will shift City’s playing style just enough to accomodate the 21-year-old.
But Haaland, of course, will have to meet them half way. He has been steadily improving his game outside the box over the last few years, recording better numbers in terms of passing, linking the play, and pressing from the front.
And yet on most of these measures, he still ranks poorly against other strikers. FBRef’s report comparing Haaland to all forwards in the ‘Big Five’ leagues over the last 365 days (across all competitions) has him in the 44th percentile for passes completed; the 38th percentile for short passes completed; the 24th percentile for pressures; and the 36th percentile for touches.
Getty/GOALHaaland, though, will not need to become as adept as Phil Foden in deeper areas to work in a Guardiola team.
A lot of the high turnovers Man City achieve from their hard pressing, for example, can be done by others – to then release Haaland in behind.
But he does need to do a lot better than he has been doing over the last two years, even accounting for the different tactical demands at Borussia Dortmund.
Guardiola clearly anticipates that a young and intelligent player like Haaland has the capacity to adapt his game and learn the ropes. Most likely, the Norway international will do just that, and yet it is curious to note Guardiola has recently developed a habit of chasing star players who do not instinctively fit his philosophy.
First it was Jack Grealish, then a late attempt to sign Cristiano Ronaldo at the end of August, and now City have signed Haaland shortly after their interest in Paul Pogba was recently made public.
It begs the question: does Guardiola want players like Haaland to adapt to his methods, or is there a whole new Guardiola methodology on the horizon?