If you have money, don’t you dare to spend it?

On July 30, Manchester City spent 30 million pounds to buy back youth goalkeeper Trafford, which inadvertently set a milestone record: With Trafford joining, coach Guardiola's transfer fee for signings and transfers in his coaching career reached 2 billion euros.

The number makes Guardiola far surpass the head coach behind him and become the number one person in football today. This number has brought him a lot of honors and has become a verdict for many fans to criticize him. He has led the trend of "gold-yuan football" in Europe, but the return rate is not as beautiful as imagined.

Reporter Yin Chengjun reported that Guardiola, who is 54 years old this year, officially became the coach of Barcelona's first team in 2008, and started his life as a cheating coach. He is lucky. His starting point is much higher than most coaches in the world, and he has never fallen to a low point. Even Ancelotti, known as the "world coach", has fallen to coach second and third-rate teams in the Premier League. However, Guardiola has always been at the top of the world football world and has coached only three giants in his life - Barcelona, Bayern and Manchester City.

In the 17 years from 2008 to the present, Guardiola has completed 145 signings, including 17 people in the Barcelona period, 17 people in the Bayern period, and as many as 111 people in the past decade. Perhaps only a super rich team like Manchester City can support Guardiola's star strategy. In Guardiola's signing list, Gallish became the most valuable player with 115 million euros, but he did not play his due role in Manchester City's football system.

With Guardiola's eyes, he cannot be misleading, and some of the high-cost-performance players are praised by fans. For example, in his first summer of his coaching at Barcelona, Pique returned to the Camp Nou from Manchester United for 5 million euros, which was also Guardiola's first most eye-catching signing since his debut.

Since then, Guardiola has frequently released excellent works in the transfer market. In 2010, he signed Mascherano and Keita for 34 million euros, and the two have since become the cornerstone of Barcelona's midfield. At Bayern, Guardiola signed Lewandowski for free, and signed Alonso, 20-year-old Kimmich and 19-year-old Koeman for less than 10 million euros. Although Guardiola's record at Bayern was not ideal, his several value-for-money signings laid the foundation for Bayern's dominance in the next ten years.

After coming to Manchester City, Guardiola began to make a big splash in spending money, and also pushed the wave of "gold dollar football" in European football to a new height. Guardiola's most expensive transfer deals in his coaching career were basically completed at Manchester City, and Haaland was not ranked in the top ten at all.

Among them, in addition to the "king" Gralish mentioned above, there are Croatian defender Gvadior who was introduced 77.5 million pounds, Ruben Dias who was introduced 65 million pounds, Rodri who was introduced 62 million pounds and Mahrez who was introduced 60 million pounds. The top five players (including Gallish) spent nearly 400 million euros in Manchester City, accounting for one-fifth of Guardiola's total career signing expenses.

These records also made Guardiola a figure at the top of the European coach's pyramid, allowing him to firmly occupy the top spot in the head coach's transfer spending list.

I am afraid of competing for "cost-performance ratio"

Since I have spent so much money, many fans have to use "cost-performance ratio" as a matter of things. How many championships did Guardiola win in his coaching career? How many honors did he bring to his team? How many players have he trained?

Guardiola's coaching experience at Barcelona is the most successful. He has brought 14 championships to his parent team, including three consecutive La Liga titles and the 2008 and 2011 Champions League championships, and his debut was at its peak.

In his three years at Bayern, he only had three consecutive championships in the Bundesliga, and such achievements can be achieved with another coach.

Marc City's nine years are the most important chapter in Guardiola's coaching career. From 2018 to 2024, Manchester City won six Premier League titles in seven years and won the Champions League championship in 2023. Last season, Manchester City experienced a serious decline. Under the criticism of fans and the media, Guardiola had no choice but to use the community shield championship as a shield, saying that he was not invincible throughout the season.

It can be seen that Guardiola has the highest "cost-performance ratio" when coaching at Barcelona. He only introduced 17 people in four years. The most expensive signing was Ibrahimovic with 56 million pounds. The low spending actually created his best record in his career.

Of course, this has something to do with Barcelona's previous foundation. Messi is mature under his command. Xavi and Fabregas and other youth training players have gradually emerged in the later stages of his coaching. The strong youth training system allows Guardiola to achieve three consecutive championships in the league and two crowns in the Champions League without spending too much money.

After coming to Bayern, Guardiola also benefited from Bayern's strong foundation and won the Bundesliga without much effort. During this period, his talent in discovering young talents began to be highlighted. Kimich, Koeman and others were discovered and made great achievements by him. It was a masterpiece to poach the old boss's footsteps for 25 million euros. In addition, Bayern also exempted from signing Lewandowski. Although it has nothing to do with Guardiola's own ability, it also showed his ability to recognize people to a certain extent.

On the contrary, after arriving in Manchester City, Guardiola changed his previous cautious attitude and let go of his hands and feet to sign a large number of players. During this period, Manchester City signed a total of 111 players, but most of the deals did not even splash. Only a few people such as Rodri, Haaland, Cancelo and Gvadior truly succeeded, and these players were extremely valuable and cost a lot.

Of course, in terms of the low cost performance, Guardiola is not yet ranked. Simeone is the "dragon among men". He spent a total of 1.3 billion euros in his coaching career, most of which were completed after taking over Atletico Madrid in 2011.. In the past 14 years, he has only brought two La Liga titles to Atletico Madrid (2014 and 2021) and two Europa League titles (2012 and 2018), and has almost no outstanding talents for Atletico Madrid. The only few people, such as Rodri and Griezmann, have also provided talents to Manchester City and Barcelona.

Will the money burn continue?

After building Manchester City's football system, Guardiola also suspended crazy signings. On the one hand, the team is full of talents, and on the other hand, the club is targeted by the Premier League and UEFA due to financial problems, so it seems unwise to spend money against the wind.

However, due to Manchester City's poor record last season, Guardiola has shown his unique skills and began to introduce a large number of new players. In the winter transfer window in January this year, Manchester City spent more than 200 million euros to introduce Marmush, Niko Gonzalez, Kusanov and Rez. In the transfer market this summer, Manchester City has set out nearly 200 million euros to sign, Reindez joins for 55 million euros, Nuri and Serky join for 36.8 million euros and 36.5 million euros respectively, and Trafford's introduction also increased the team's spending by 31 million euros.

Guardiola not only led the "money burning list", but also left the latecomers far behind, making them unable to catch up.

But what did Guardiola spend so much money in exchange for? According to his own words, it is still disappointment and loss. "For four or five months this year, I went to every away game, and the fans were shouting, 'You will be fired tomorrow morning'. There is no other industry in the world, and there will be 60,000 people who will smash your job. After winning 6 Premier League championships, you will definitely encounter setbacks."

At the same time, he admitted that coaching is a long life-span job, "I must live less years. Especially in adversity, those long nights, daily work every day becomes more difficult. Coaching is an all-weather job. If you don't do this, you will definitely fail."

He did not mention his 2 billion euro signing, as if it was right. When he took over Manchester City, it was also a period of unbalanced European football ecology. Guardiola invested 2 billion euros, accounting for as much as 80% of the time. This operating model that relies on the strong capital of investors completely subverted the team building model of Ferguson and Wenger, which relied on youth training and refined management by seniors such as Ferguson and Wenger. Just this summer, while small and medium clubs are still struggling to survive, Manchester City can still easily invest 200 million euros to sign up.

But football has to be talked about after the results. Although Guardiola complained about the hard work of the coach and intends to recuperate for a while after the contract expires in 2027, he must continue to show convincing results in the past two years to dispel the doubts of fans and prove that money can build the stage. The director's script is the key to a good show.