Spaniard has found success at Barcelona and Bayern Munich but the competitive marathon that is the English season would provide an unfamiliar challenge if he ends up at Manchester City

After Chelsea had won the league last season, José Mourinho made a not especially veiled dig at Pep Guardiola. “Maybe,” he said, “I will go to a country where a kitman can be coach and win the title.” Maybe if he had, the fiasco of this season at Stamford Bridge would not have happened.

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The jibe was unfair in a number of ways but it carried enough truth to sting. At Bayern Munich, Guardiola took over a club that had just won the treble. Inevitably, in terms of trophies won, the trajectory has been downward: two Bundesliga titles have followed and there will surely be a third this year but in each of the past two seasons Bayern have gone out of the Champions League in the semi-finals.

In terms of the football played, though, Guardiola’s reign has been a triumph. Bayern stand in the avant-garde of football’s tactical evolution. Their formation shifts from game to game, even within games. So unpredictable is Guardiola the team sheet offers only a hint of how they may play. At Bayern, he seems to have become more flexible than he was at Barcelona, integrating an orthodox centre-forward in Robert Lewandowski. Pressing and possession are still fundamental to his conception of the game but there is a greater willingness to go direct, a more varied approach.

No other manager is so responsive to the game. To watch Guardiola during a match is to see a man engaged in a frenetic game of three-dimensional chess, always standing on the edge of his technical area, barking instructions, always seeking an advantage. When Bayern beat Arsenal 2-0 at the Emirates two seasons ago he reacted to the first-half substitution of Kieran Gibbs by overloading the right, correctly reasoning Nacho Monreal would take a few minutes to settle. The result, within five minutes, was the move that led to a red card for Wojciech Szczesny.

But is the thrillingly intelligent football enough? Given that Bayern’s financial might has come to make it feel as though Bundesliga titles come as part of a package, those who are not convinced by Guardiola have used that against him, suggesting he has effectively only played to par. Five league titles in six completed seasons as a manager is hard to criticise but he has always done it with favourites.

If, as seems likely, he comes to the Premier League and succeeds, Guardiola will at least free himself from the kitman jibe. Whatever the failings of the Premier League, it cannot be denied that it is competitive. Whichever club he takes over – Manchester City looks the most probable destination – will not enjoy the sort of domination Barça and Bayern do. It will not be a case of two or four games against peers but of eight or 10.

And, while the cliche the Premier League is the only major league where the bottom can beat the top may grate, there is some truth to it: Louis van Gaal is not a man given to platitudes, so his assertion the Premier League is a “rat race” unlike any he has known can be taken at face value. There is a constant attrition that takes a toll – and perhaps partly explains the recent underperformance of Premier League clubs in Europe – and it is Guardiola’s capacity to deal with that grind that would define him were he to come to England.

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Although there have been some memorable victories – Barcelona’s two Champions League final wins against Manchester United and Bayern’s 5-1 win over Arsenal this season, for instance – Guardiola’s record against English sides is not brilliant: 18 games have produced eight wins and five defeats. It may be that that statistic is slightly freakish – two of the defeats have come in dead rubbers, two of the draws led to an away-goals victory and one to a penalty shootout win – but equally it may be the instinctive intensity of the English game mitigates against the intensity Guardiola brings.

Given he has shown in Germany his capacity to adapt, given his football is about constant evolution, that should not be too much of an issue, but what is a concern is how sustainable the Guardiola philosophy is in a country with a 20-team league and two domestic cup competitions, in which there is a physicality and a level of consistent competitiveness he has not faced.

Could players maintain the physical and mental level required over perhaps 50 intense games? Would Guardiola, with the routine of two games most weeks, be able to undertake the levels of preparation he clearly does now? Given the ferocity of his focus, would he be able to bear up to the strain?

If Guardiola does end up at City, there will be a sense of him going into a job that is made for him, with two former Barcelona officials in key positions and a burgeoning academy. But it would be a new test of his managerial style, and would remove any lingering doubt about his own genius. If a manager can thrive in Spain, Germany and England, there would be no questions left to answer.