Pep’s former Under-21 coach lifts the lid on what makes him tick

The messages kept pinging and a trickle became a torrent. Friends from over the water in Cork were into Brian Barry-Murphy’s ribs.

He was a bit of a tactical upstart when he started in management at Rochdale five years ago. His Total Football, the relentless pursuit of dominating possession, was so startling in League One that his team went viral across social media, heightened by romantic cup runs, including a draw at Old Trafford.

Barry-Murphy briefly became one of the most talked-about young coaches in the game and the Cork lads saw it. The Irish way is to playfully nip any thoughts of grandiose in the bud and so the texts rained down.

They mocked him for producing fashionable displays but not winning points and joked he would be ‘back home’ soon enough with tail between legs. They were half-right — a youthful Rochdale suffered relegation.

Then there was another claim — ‘you’ve been too busy watching yer man at Manchester City.’

Yer man would become Barry-Murphy’s boss soon enough. From 2021, he worked for Pep Guardiola until leaving City this summer. As Under 21 head coach, he helped with first team training, studying Guardiola and taking notes.

It was a front-row seat for the greatest spell of superiority the English game has seen in a long while and was also integral in the growth of Cole Palmer, Oscar Bobb and Rico Lewis.

Barry-Murphy would never say this himself, but the man looking after the kids saw his role within Guardiola’s inner circle grow. He became more hands-on and involved every week.

Guardiola heavily leant on him for character references for the teenagers coming through, much like he did with his predecessor, Enzo Maresca. That guy has done all right for himself since and Barry-Murphy fancies a piece of it on his own now too.

Engaging, a 100mph conversationalist, he doesn’t really delve into the tactical genius of City as he reflects on a period that likely defines his future career.

‘I’ve got a theory which I recently explained to my wife (TV presenter Sarah-Jane Crawford),’ he says. ‘Pep’s got this unbelievable ability to make you want to please him. I see it with my children, you know when you’re looking for the attention of your mother or father?

‘He’s got this amazing personal touch which makes you feel incredible. It’s linked to how good he is. You want to feel you’re contributing to what he’s doing. He might ask you to do the simplest thing and if you do it well and he goes “perfect”, you feel your life is complete.

‘Then there are other days when he doesn’t quite get what he wants and you feel like you’ve failed him. You might not deserve praise and in that moment he can appear like he’s not valuing what you’re doing, but he does it in a way — and I don’t know whether this is conscious or not — that you then want to go back the next day and do it perfectly.

‘There were a couple of days where I was doing practice with them and my service just wasn’t right. When it’s not perfect, he gives you the look. He doesn’t say anything. It lives with you until you can put it right.

‘I reckon that’s what it must be like for the players. He is patient with the ones who have good attitudes, but if he sees you receiving the ball with the wrong body shape, that’s when you see him at his most intense. He’ll show you.

‘If there is something he doesn’t like in an action designed to replicate the game, he’ll jump in. That’s it in a nutshell. He’s mind- blowing. However good you think he is, he’s better.’

This is a fascinating hour in Barry-Murphy’s company. He has closely watched Maresca’s rise, first at Leicester and now at Chelsea. He is also aware of what Mikel Arteta picked up from Guardiola and took into reawakening Arsenal.

Vincent Kompany’s trajectory is slightly different in that Bayern Munich’s manager never coached at City, yet it does make you sit and wonder. So many of those who are in close contact with Guardiola achieve success.

There is no reason why Barry-Murphy cannot replicate that. He wants a challenge and has set no geographical limits.

‘Anywhere in the world,’ he says. ‘If I see it and like it, I’ll go. I fell into management. I became Rochdale manager because my friend (Keith Hill) got sacked. I had a clear idea of playing. I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn’t always know how to do it.

‘I remember Txiki (Begiristain, City’s sporting director) saying to me that you end up talking so much about what you do, and how you do it, that people don’t want to hear it.

‘If you keep talking about the way you play then when you go on a losing run, nobody cares. I felt sometimes at Rochdale, when I look back, I spent too much time talking about style.

‘You never see a manager say, “well I don’t want the ball and I don’t want to press”. Everyone wants that, but they don’t always know how, do they? I’ve learned how to attack more efficiently. I’ve evolved to make sure the football you see when I go back isn’t boring.’

Begiristain became an unforeseen mentor for Barry-Murphy. In 2023, after the Under 21s lifted a third straight league title, he asked him to stay for 12 more months and then promised the club would set him free.

It was an inspired decision, given how Guardiola continued to gravitate towards the Irishman. He got an extra few months to soak up the magic of City’s fourth league title on the spin.

‘When I joined I instinctively, 100 per cent, knew it was the right decision,’ he says. ‘The club said I’d have the chance to work with Pep every day. I thought “I’ll never get this opportunity again”.

‘He’s got an unbelievable aura, a presence. He can be really sensitive and have that empathy when you might not be expecting it. That’s why he has got so much credit when he demands so much from you. It is unbelievable.

‘We’d had a baby after having a miscarriage. How he interacted with me and my wife was incredible.

‘He barely knew me, it was when I first went there. When I rocked up I was an ex-manager from Rochdale who’d taken them down. He made me feel integral — him and Manel (Estiarte, head of player support) were like that from the first day.’

It is easy to surmise that any coach can take away plenty from three years next to Guardiola but, practically, what does that look like?

As Barry-Murphy reasons, you cannot get inside the man’s head, so there has to be something visibly tangible. The Sunday Sessions offer that.

‘The ones who didn’t play for the seniors and Under 21s would always come together for a session on the Sunday,’ he says. ‘It’s quite an individual thing for Pep, it’s brilliant. I’ve heard of clubs where the younger players provide opposition, but never when it’s so entwined and so involved.

‘He’s always there on a Sunday, always. He wants to see them, how they react. He doesn’t miss a trick. The way he works is class. This way of training that he does is liberating, empowering. It gives you belief that what he is asking of you, you’ve trained it over and over again. There is so much tactical innovation, an obsession with tactics.

‘What people don’t see is from day one of pre-season, Pep is working on the simplest technical action from scratch. I’ve seen players think pre-season is relatively easy and that’s interesting to me. It’s just his way, he builds.

‘It’s that attention to repetition of the simple things. When Rico Lewis plays inside, he’s done a million passing drills so he has that repetition. When he gets possession in drills, it’s exactly the same position as in a game.

‘It’s like golf. You get that swing from hours on the range.’

Ready to tee off himself, Barry-Murphy now has a few additional clubs in his bag.