“Last weekend, Pep Guardiola spent 15 minutes standing on the Goodison Park turf, long before his Manchester City players came out for their pre-game warm-up. ‘I remember when I was a little boy,’ he said later of Goodison, ahead of Everton’s move to their new home at Bramley-Moore Dock this summer. ‘Today, I watched the (stadium big) screen with goals from Gary Lineker and said, ‘Wow, this is English football’.’ In Spanish, Guardiola might be known as a ‘mitomano’ — somebody quick to idolise, generally, a person. In his case, it is footballers, but also stadiums and competitions. He would watch English football on television when he was a youngster in the Catalan town of Santpedor. Not that many games were available on television in the 1970s and 1980s, but he obviously saw enough for some core memories to form. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)