Andre Villas-Boas takes on his 'inspiration' Pep Guardiola as Marseille face Manchester City in the Champions League

The Portuguese has seen his managerial career plateau after flying start but his admiration for the Catalonian has never wavered

Marseille manager Andre Villas-Boas during Marseille's 1-0 Ligue 1 at Lorient on Saturday, October 24. Reuters

Andre Villas Boas oversees Marseille training on Monday, October 26, ahead of their Champions League match against Manchester City. AFP

Marseille goalkeeper Steve Mandanda during training. AFP

Left to right: Duje Caleta-Car, Dario Benedetto and Jordan Amavi. AFP

Marseille forward Florian Thauvin. AFP

Andre Villas Boas and Florian Thauvin. AFP

Left to right: Valere Germain, Florian Thauvin, Mickael Cuisance and Morgan Sanson. AFP

Andre Villas Boas and Steve Mandanda. AFP

Marseille midfielder Dimitri Payet, left, and Jordan Amavi. AFP

(fromL) Marseille's Brazilian forward Luis Henrique, Marseille's Argentine forward Dario Benedetto and Marseille's Dutch midfielder Kevin Strootman practice at the training camp of Marseille on October 26, 2020, on the eve of the Champions League football match against Manchester City. / AFP / Christophe SIMON

The first competitive meeting of Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola and Andre Villas-Boas, his counterpart in Marseille on Tuesday, seems a decade overdue.

Ten seasons ago, they were both at the vanguard of what seemed a major shift across elite football towards young, precocious coaches.

Back then, they showered one another with praise. In 2010-11, Guardiola won his second Champions League title, as the 40-year-old guide of a dazzling Barcelona.

Ten days before Barca’s victory in the final over Manchester United, Villas-Boas’s Porto lifted the Europa League. “My inspiration is Guardiola,” he said afterwards. AVB, as he is known, was astonishingly young, just 33, and very obviously marked out for bigger jobs. “His Porto team are brilliant,” purred Guardiola.

That season, Jurgen Klopp won his first league title, with Borussia Dortmund, and Max Allegri his maiden Serie A title with AC Milan. They were both 43. Within the next decade, Allegri and Klopp would between them win eight leagues and reach three Champions League finals, while Guardiola would add three Bundesliga titles and two Premier Leagues to the trio of La Liga trophies he had already won as a manager.

As for the junior member of that brigade, he did not quite keep up. AVB’s early career – a Treble at Porto in his first full season as a manager, after serving as an assistant to Jose Mourinho at the trophy-laden Portuguese club, Chelsea and Inter Milan – gave way to a plateau.

With the nickname 'Mini-Mou', because of his association with Mourinho, still firmly tagged to him, he joined Chelsea immediately after his European success with Porto. He was sacked the following March. A season-and-a-half at Tottenham Hotspur followed, until Spurs turned their gaze towards another up-and-coming manager, Mauricio Pochettino.

At 43, Villas-Boas is entitled to feel he is still a very young manager, and, even if he has been away from football for periods, that he has packed a lot of useful learning into his time so far.

His stint in England had its highs. He was Chelsea manager for most of a season that finished, under his caretaker successor Roberto di Matteo, with the club’s first and only European Cup. His full season with Spurs registered what was then a historically high points total for Spurs – 72, and fifth place – and it yielded the €100 million sale to Real Madrid of Gareth Bale, who had thrived under AVB.

He went on to win a Russian Premier League with Zenit Saint-Petersburg, took Shanghai SIPG to the semi-finals of the Asian Champions League, and, in an unusual switch of sports, competed in the Paris-Dakar rally in 2018.

When Marseille offered him the head coach job, in mid-2019, he had been away from management for 18 months.

He has seldom had to operate with a tighter transfer budget than in Marseille, but, so far, Villas-Boas has encouraged supporters of Marseille to believe this studious Portuguese might be the sherpa to lead the club back towards the elevated status they once enjoyed.

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Player ratings for City 4 Porto 1

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They are the only French club to have lifted the Champions League – in 1993 – and when last season, AVB’s first at the helm, was abandoned in April because of the pandemic, Marseille were the closest to the serial champions Paris Saint-Germain in the Ligue 1 table. Being runners-up meant Marseille returning to the Champions League after an absence of seven years.

Progress beyond Group C, which they share with City, Porto and Olympiakos will be tough, especially having lost their opening fixture to an injury-time goal in Greece. Villas-Boas will welcome back his key creator Dimitri Payet from domestic suspension on Tuesday but acknowledges that Marseille expect to spend much of the match on the back foot.

“City are going to look to play high up the pitch and with all the mobility they have, you need to find ways of releasing the pressure,” said Villas-Boas. “I’m sure they will end up with 60 to 65 per cent possession. But this is a chance for us to take on one of the best teams in the world.”

It is also a first chance for AVB to take on his "inspiration". He used the word – twice – of Guardiola in yesterday’s pre-match press conference. “I got to know Pep when I was at Porto and he was with Barcelona, and I’ve always followed his career. He’s been an inspiration for me, as somebody who is always innovating, taking risks, changing the dynamic and the movements of his teams. He thinks a lot about ways of playing, and has never been a coach just focused on results.”

Recent results, though, are a City concern. They won just one of their last four Premier League matches and the inspirational Guardiola, just like Villas-Boas, is now approaching the tenth anniversary of his last winner's medal in any European competition.