Has game-changer Pep Guardiola ended Jose Mourinho’s run at the top of the game?

For a midweek without any big matches across Europe, it was certainly filled with a lot of incident - and an awful lot of tension.

Pep Guardiola kept everyone waiting about his future, especially current employers Bayern Munich, as he thought about a final decision on what to do next. Chelsea then kept Jose Mourinho waiting as to whether they would resign him to club history, before eventually taking the decision to sack him..

All of this will mean clear change at the top level of European football, but also shows how much change there has been in what was once among the most intense managerial rivalries in the game.

Mourinho and Guardiola instantly found themselves at opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum over how football should be played, and it is no exaggeration to say that contrast between those two men - as well as a host of other personal differences - has defined so much of the game over the past decade.

Those differences have now resulted in a stark contrast in their situations too.

Whereas Guardiola is again wanted by virtually all of the super-clubs - especially those two in Manchester - this Chelsea sacking could feasibly end Mourinho’s time at that level of the game..

Dismissal does terminal damage to the Portuguese’s reputation, and brings a scarcely believable collapse to a drastic conclusion that even he would struggle to spin. Mourinho has certainly found it hard to solve the first great crisis of his career, and only succeeded in feeding the doubts that have put off many of the big clubs in appointing him in the past.

The wonder is who will take the risk on him now. It all indicates that Guardiola now stands alone as the greatest manager in the game, where once he had the most fitting of rivals and opposites in Mourinho.

The great irony of that is the two have always been subjected to the same single big criticism. One persistent argument about both is that they need to be at big clubs with either huge money or ready-made squads to succeed. It has always been unfair and inaccurate. Most obviously, that criticism overlooks the fact that both started low down and had good results and did work that had key football figures taking note. From there, they didn’t just have success at bigger jobs. They had sensational success, pulling off doubles, trebles and a series of historic firsts in European football.

The way they did so, however, feeds into why we find ourselves at this week’s juncture.

In that regard, Barcelona’s decision to overlook Mourinho for Guardiola in the summer of 2008 could yet come to be seen as one of the game’s great historical junctures too. It conditioned and foreshadowed so much.

At that point, Mourinho was on his own as the finest coach in the game.

His meticulous tactical mind and muscular style of football trampled over most in a period when Champions League goal averages were lower, at 2.5 per game. This was the era of “control”, as his other great rival Rafa Benitez put it; of tensely tight European semi-finals such as those between Liverpool and Chelsea. It was a more defence-oriented era, and one that Mourinho dictated.

Then, Barcelona took a calculated risk on Guardiola, and the Spaniard’s riskier brand of football blew the game open. The sport began to open up again, specifically because the effect of the Catalan’s passing-pressing game.

Goal averages instantly shot up, and now stand at close to three a game in the Champions League. The caution of Chelsea-Liverpool has been replaced by exhibitions of attacking excellence like Barcelona-Bayern Munich.

It is no exaggeration to say Guardiola is the most influential manager since Arrigo Sacchi, as the Italian himself argued.

It is no coincidence that managers like Benitez and Mourinho have started to struggle in this, even if the Portuguese’s other qualities have allowed him to experience temporary success - but it is telling he is not sustaining it like between 2003 and 2010. It is now as if they are trying to apply old methods on a new game, still believing it to be the same.

Representatives of some players also feel that the new generation - “the millennial generation” - aren’t as receptive to certain abrasive managerial techniques in the way that figures like Didier Drogba and Ricardo Carvalho were.

That has meant Mourinho hasn’t been able to build the same connection with current players as he did in the past. The modern stars are more in tune with the approach of Guardiola.

He is the one the stars want to most work with now, in the way that used to be the case with Mourinho back in 2008.

It is why so many clubs now want to appoint Guardiola. It is part of the reason why Mourinho is currently suffering such tension.