Christian Psyyk

Manchester City, treble winners, 2022/2023. Now officially the best
team in England and across Europe for the past season, Pep Guardiola and his team have created an unique and oft insurmountable machine of success and optimised performances. There have been numerous reasons cited for their imperious form, most notably the managerial genius of Guardiola, and the statistically incredible performances of Erling Haaland, now holding the record for most goals in a 38 game season in the Premier League, and Kevin De Bruyne, often viewed as the best playmaker in world football. However, how has this team of perceived superstars, including the then most expensive Premier League player of all time Jack Grealish and 2022 World Cup winner Julian Alvarez, adapted so well to an idea of the team’s success taking priority over individual plaudits, and what can football learn from their example? While exploring this question, this article will focus on one, but by no means the only element: balance, firstly represented by the compromise between control and creativity, and secondly the balance between psychological safety and pressure (Salcinovic et al., 2022).