World Cup winner accuses Pep Guardiola of RUINING football

World Cup winning striker Luca Toni has accused Pep Guardiola of ruining football with the false 9 position, jokingly.

On Tuesday 15 October in Brescia, Luca Toni and Pep Guardiola had an amusing and jocular argument during a dinner between the two men and Roberto Baggio.

Guardiola, Toni and Baggio were all team-mates at Brescia during the 2001/02 season under Carlo Mazzone where they finished 13th in Serie A.

During this reunion dinner, Toni jokingly told Guardiola he had “ruined football with the false 9. I couldn’t find a team for four years.”

© IMAGO – Guardiola dominated football as Barcelona boss while using the false 9

Toni then asked Pep “do you even like centre-forwards?” To which Guardiola retorted “I have Haaland, 60 goals,” before ribbing his former team-mate: “we won the Treble with that striker, but the centre-forwards must be good – understand?”

Toni ended the video with a call for Pep to “stop with the false 9, ok? Big centre-forwards are better.”

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Guardiola and the false 9

Luca Toni’s tone was jocular but he had obviously been holding on to that grudge for a long, long while as Guardiola hasn’t played regularly with a false nine since his first season at Bayern Munich a decade ago in 2013/14.

That season, Guardiola had Mario Gotze do a poor impression of the genius Lionel Messi produced at Barcelona under him. It didn’t work as well, and Guardiola signed Robert Lewandowski in the summer.

© IMAGO – Messi was the master of the false 9, especially under Guardiola.

And at City, Guardiola didn’t use a false nine so much as he used Gabriel Jesus who linked play very well but just didn’t score much, so people assumed he was a false nine. He wasn’t. And nevertheless Guardiola used Sergio Aguero and then, yes, Erling Haaland.

So for Toni to bring it up now that Guardiola is playing the biggest of big centre-forwards is pretty funny.

Even funnier is that while Guardiola undoubtedly mainstreamed the false 9, the person who really “invented” (i.e. brought it back) the false 9 was an Italian: Luciano Spalletti.

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Spalletti used the false 9 extensively at Roma as a way to both cover for the side’s lack of traditional striker and also make use of Francesco Totti’s stupendous skill-set.

Both men (and Baggio) laughed and everyone seemed to be having a good time.