John Stones is the new Lionel Messi inside Pep’s magical mind

Most football fans have that ‘wow’ moment when they watch a team for the first time and it totally blows their mind.

Maybe it was the Hungary of the 1950s, or the Dutch teams of the 1970s, maybe it was Brazil in 1982. Arrigo Sacchi was said to have changed football thinking with his great Milan sides of the late 80s and was then replaced by Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona dream team. I’ve read the stories, seen the video clips and have some vague memories of the Sacchi and Cruyff era but there was a definite fallow period which followed and the great tactical minds of this century ended up being Jose Mourinho and Rafael Benitez among others.

It felt like the only two ways of playing were 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 and they were pretty much the same. We were crying out for something different, something innovative, somebody to take the game on and the wow moment for me came watching Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, particularly when he seemed to defy conventional wisdom at the time by moving little Lionel Messi to the false nine position.

Where Pep started others followed, and it’s been for the good of the game. At Bayern he moved right-back Philipp Lahm to midfield and we saw at Manchester City how he went the other way by converting midfielder Oleksandr Zinchenko to left-back, while Joao Cancelo became a creative full-back freak. It’s now almost second nature for teams to use full-backs in more central positions when in possession and so at that point Guardiola tried to find something new.

John Stones won’t win any player-of-the-year awards but the switch to his new hybrid position of centre-back/central midfielder has been the making of this City double-winning team and he is likely to be key to their hopes of beating Inter in the Champions League final.

I was lucky enough to be at Wembley for the FA Cup final last week and it was the first time I’d seen City in the flesh since Guardiola found a new position for Stones.

It was another wow moment as the Barnsley Beckenbauer ran the show against Manchester United. Just like when Messi played up front for Barca it really shouldn’t work and logic says a centre-back in a defensive four should stay where he is, but Stones was almost unplayable, creating a box midfield alongside Rodri with Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin De Bruyne more advanced.

When United tried to close the central passing lanes there was space out wide and if they let Stones have the ball he invariably moved it up the pitch in expert fashion. I don’t envy Inter boss Simone Inzaghi as he attempts to nullify Stones, who averages 65.7 passes in the Premier League this season and looks worth backing to eclipse his line of 59.5 in Istanbul. It might not be a death by a thousand passes, but hopefully by at least 60.

City’s domination of the Premier League can’t be good for English football and if they complete the treble it will further suggest the rest are playing for the minor places in future campaigns. But winners are copied and if that means more people thinking like Guardiola then it cannot be a totally bad thing either.

Today’s top sports betting stories

Follow us on Twitter @racingpostsport