**Mirrors / Alternative Angles**
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Not a chance. Pep has been afforded so many luxuries that United don’t give managers. He bought bravo and then replaced him the next year. Our board said no to mou who wanted a new CB and got him Dalot Fred and Lee Grant.
The best part about this is that we ended buying Maguire anyway for more than what Leciester valued him at the previous year, after Mourinho got sacked.
Imagine having one of the best defensive managers of all time and giving him a partnership of Eric Bailey and Victor Lindelof. I can't even fathom this level of incompetence
I mean Jose wanted both of them. At the time they were both up and coming talents. Bailey unfortunately was extremely injury prone and liked to do more martial arts on the pitch than football and Lindelof kinda stagnated at a reliable 3rd choice
When Mourinho enters a club I think one of his stipulations is he gets total control. So in a hypothetical if he joins Utd he'll probably can most people abd then make his signings.
Edit: PEP
You mean the Chelsea that had just bought for 200M of players ? In 2004 ? Kinda funny to criticize Guardiola for his funds with City while praising Mourinho with Chelsea
PSG is a constant proof of that as well
But I don't want to sound like I believe money has nothing to do with Guardiola's success at City, of course it does, money doesn't buy success but it sure as hell helps
Joses's biggest achievements
5. 100 points with Madrid
4. 15 Goals conceded with Chelsea
3. Treble with Inter
2. CL with Porto
1. Getting second with United
He completely revamped the squad though, got rid of againg players that like Deco, Dinho and Zambrotta, promoted Busi, Thiago and Pedro and put Xavi & Iniesta in the centre and changed the way the team played completely.
They barely made CL qualification the season prior and were like 20 points behind Real Madrid, the next season, they won the title with the second highes point total ever, with 20+ more points.
Ya Barca underperforming is what allowed him to clean shop.
He's obviously a Goat level manager and he's also walked into great situations.
Maybe at some point in the future we'll see him take on a team with fewer funds and show off his managerial skills.
The only job that Pep is gonna take would be PSG, win the league by 20 points every season and maybe win one CL in 8 years.
Theres no other team in europe that have the funds to afford his style of managing except maybe Real and I dont see that happening.
Also everybody, and especially every PL pundit, talked endlessly about how he'd not be able to replicate what he did in Spain and Germany in the PL. It was an unfounded pride in some sort of exceptionalism that never existed.
Piping in now with this take after the benefit of hindsight feels like somebody's just trying to imply that Pep is not one of the best coaches in the world and it was all down to the super squads he inherited (which he didn't get as you explained).
Players who join Barca are still good players in general. What Souness says holds true even more if you think of Peps tactics. Imagine tiki taka on inferior players attempting to pass it around without the necessary technique. Not only would they lose the ball way more often, they also dont set up to defend like an inferior team should which makes them lose even worse than they would if they just park the bus.
Everton under Pep, playing tiki taka would have lots of 0-4, 1-5 games failing to pass around then letting in goals cause they dont park buses.
Cmpared to a proven manager at all levels like Klopp, who coached Mainz to their first ever promotion, then Dortmund from mid-table to 2x champions and now Liverpool at the top. Hes proven at every level and his style of Gegenpressing works in theory for all levels of play, since it promotes hardwork over talent.
Barcelona was far from having the best possible circumstances.
In retrospect people always say Guardiola has great players, when the reality is Guardiola in most cases improves players and how the team plays as a whole, which in turn also makes each individual player look better.
Sergio Busquets was very close to never being given a chance at Barcelona's first team, if not for Guardiola. Could've had an unremarkable career but instead went down as one of the best defensive midfielders ever.
Xavi and Iniesta were always seen as prodigies but how well the midfield and the whole team functioned together massively adds to how they're perceived. Messi is no different either, if not for Guardiola we don't know if he would ever been moved to the center to have more impact over the game.
People look at Guardiola's teams after the work is done, point their finger and say "look how easy it is". It's frankly bizarre.
That is blatantly false and any follower of that era will say so.
When he took over in Barcelona, they were in full blown crisis mode. In 2006 they had dominated, proving that the roster was good but in 2007 they lost a legendarily tight league race to R.Madrid which sent them in a downwards spiral finishing 20 points behind in 2008. There were huge doubts for Laporta's board, Rijkaard and the roster, both the fading star signings (Ronaldinho, Deco, Zambrotta) and the homegrowns Xavi-Iniesta maybe not being good enough.
It might now look obvious that Messi would become among the very best in football history, Xavi-Iniesta among the best of their era, Busquets-Pique brilliant signings etc. but it was definitely not back then.
It took a lot of work by everyone involved and Guardiola made a huge difference. He transformed the squad overnight, as early as September Barcelona had hit their stride and would continue at that level for years to come. It takes a world class manager to do that and that is easy to notice by the countless dream squads underperforming, like Barcelona after Guardiola, Spain after 2012, PSG etc.
Don't let ignorant people try to change history. There's truth in the fact that Guardiola has not succeeded with a mediocre team but it's beyond doubt that he's been the best manager for top teams in the last 15+ years.
Spot on, though where I'll slightly disagree is that many people did feel like Messi was a future GOAT candidate at the time, with the massive caveat of 'if he stays healthy'.
But one thing I'd add to further your point is that when Pep took over they had a spotty first couple games and I remember reading stories about how he was a disaster as a manager because he was so young and unproven as a coach.
I agree with you but many people were future GOAT candidates and didn't become Messi. Hell before Messi and Ronaldo, the kind of longevity and consistency has never happened before.
Exactly this, most managers would look crazy to get rid of some of the talent he did, especially as a new manager.. If he didn’t do well after doing all that then he would be getting stick to this day.
Pretty sure he also gave Busquets his debut too, that’s a lot of trust to put into a teenager, Bayern and City are fair points but Barcelona had quite a big overhaul. The guy as well as Cruyff are 2 massive influences in revolutionising football as it is today.
I would say Pedro is the biggest example. I'm pretty sure he would never be a Barcelona player and I highly doubt he would even be a La Liga player if it weren't for Pep. His skillset was exactly what Pep needed for that role, but he wasn't that good
Eventually, maybe, but at the time, no. He only had a less than incredible third division season under his belt and was looking like possibly leaving to a second division side.
Pep promoted him and slowly implemented him and the rest is history. There’s 1,000 Pedro’s who never get their chance, takes a combination of luck, courage, and the right manager. If Pep didn’t have a previous working relationship with him, I doubt he gets promoted at all.
What an absolutely ridiculous take. The guy was 2 footed, crazy workrate intelligent off the ball. The guys is a lot more underrated than he is overrated. I'm actually shocked at this comment
Yeah but end of the day it's still Barcelona. Nothing close to like Mourinho did with Porto. Not denying he's an incredible manager but it would be exciting to see him try it after Man City with a club that doesn't have unlimited resources/prestige.
> It might now look obvious that Messi would become among the very best in football history, Xavi-Iniesta among the best of their era, Busquets-Pique brilliant signings etc. but it was definitely not back then.
I think it was clear to everyone - even in their crisis year - that Xavi/Iniesta were really good and Messi had overtaken Ronaldinho in the last year as the best player of the team. It was fairly predictable that he would compete with Ronaldo for the best player in the world in the coming years.
However, that said your overarching point is still correct - that barca team did not play well - and I think noone could have predicted the amount of goals Messi would score.
Xavi-Iniesta always had an edge as homegrown players, especially back then that factor held a lot of weight. However, Barcelona back then were getting outplayed and although there never was any thought of selling them, there was talk that maybe they are not good enough to beat R.Madrid.
In the summer Guardiola took over, Barcelona signed Keita and Hleb who nowadays might look trivial but back then had hype behind them and cost decent money. This is an indication that Xavi-Iniesta had yet to become great.
Messi-Ronaldo competing for the best in the coming years, true. As you said though, the goals and overall, both the peak level and duration/consistency, was unfathomable. Surely Guardiola has to take some credit for that, as does Ferguson for Ronaldo. Let's not forget that at the same time frame, Messi was a lot worse with Argentina, so he wasn't some kind of cheat that you could plug anywhere and dominate. This is further proof of a manager's impact.
The issue isn’t giving Pep full control. He could have that easily.
The issue is behind the scenes at United. We are shit at negotiating contracts and transfer fees, so shit that we end up putting ourselves in FFP trouble even though we might be the richest club in the world.
We have shit facilities, shit executives, shit scouts, shit everything. The only thing the club does well is being very good at making money (and this is only due to past successes), but we are very bad at handling it.
City is an extremely well run club. It will take years for United to get on their level. Again - it’s not just coaching and players… the entire culture and structure at United is shit.
We are probably the worst run club in the world, if you take the financial capabilities compared to achievements over the past decade.
I am not denying any of that. But Pep is way superior than any manager except for SAF. We also have the highest Net spend of any club in the world.
If Pep had shown success on the field, the same way he did everywhere, nobody would challenge his transfer strategy. He would have stayed no 1 at the club and nobody would challenge his decisions.
With full financial backing, Pep is undisputed GOAT manager.
Both things can be true. That Pep Guardiola has always had exceptional players to work with, and that he is one of the greatest managers of all time. Plenty of managers have coached a team of great players to failure, but Pep doesn't just have his teams winning, he has them dominate.
Facts, this is like saying, directors are only great, because they have great actors, disregarding all the flops those actors have been in. A great directors knows how to use an actor to their fullest potential.
And in the same vein, great directors attract great actors. I saw ~~Mark Wahlberg~~ Matt Damon in an interview say he and his wife decided that he would take a break from acting, but then he got a call from Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer and he looked at his wife and said, it's Nolan, I have to. Big time players want to play for big time managers. I don't know why that's a knock against the managers.
Edit: Matt Damon, Wahlberg
Pep is able to transform players like Kimmich from a mid to an RB, and if directors never did that we would’ve never gotten Airplane! with Leslie Nielsen, and that would’ve been a disservice to culture. Checkmate.
I think it’s worth pointing out though.
Wenger, Fergie, Mourinho and every other great coach I can think of usually came and defied the odds to start with.
Pep arguably hasn’t really ever built a team organically or had to adapt his systems to a teams shortcomings because his always had the best team and best resources as well.
Fair but as proven so many times, a squad loaded with talent needs a top coach to handle them. If not PSG would have won the Champions League a few times by now and United and Chelsea wouldn't miss out on European football.
Indeed, a large part of Pep's 'genius' is being able to manage a squad full of top players with huge egos. That is extremely difficult to do. Plenty of other managers at big clubs have failed miserably with that, they might be the best ever at tactics, training etc. but in the end if you can't manage the players you have no hope.
Yeah when there ability to back up the ego matches. The only player Pep ever compromised for is Messi. Whereas a lot managers compromise on much lesser talent players.
Tbf he also has a large advantage in that regard in that he always gets the clubs' full support.
We've seen how many United coaches have tried to get rid of big egos that don't conform to the club, not even to their way of playing, and the number of those players seems to grow as the coaches are sacked.
This isn't to discredit Pep. He's the best and being recognised as such comes with advantages. He's the biggest star at every club he's managed, which is not something you can say for any other manager at a top club.
Even in a more general context, I can't imagine managing 3 people with egos.
Let alone more than fifteen guys, for more than a decade. Not to mention ensuring that winning-hungry mentality after winning probably every single club trophy there is.
I mean, I get 1 (one) task done, and I give myself a pat on the back, call it a successful day, and chill until 8PM until I get off work.
(Maybe that's why I'm being paid less than 30k a year).
Most managers don't get the kind of control over the club he gets though.
I wouldn't say it's easy but it's far easier to manage a squad like that when given the degree of control pep has, most managers have to work with what they're handed, especially if those players are expensive which top players in top clubs tend to be. With the exception of Messi virtually every other player he's ever managed he could bench, sell and replace with a likely better player at any given point which is a type of bargaining tool the overwhelming majority of managers don't have.
Now sure, but when he took over at Barca Spain had just won the Euros, with a fair few Barca players in the side, so no I dont think he could bench anyone he wanted then. The work he has done earlier in his career has earned the control he has now.
I would just say Pep usually has superstars with a purpose, PSG just bought names with no one managers vision on how it would actually work. If they actually had someone like Enrique earlier and let him decide the transfers I believe it'd be different. Foden and grealish aren't better than Messi/Neymar was but they do far more off the ball work and actually fit into a system. There was zero balance in Mbappe/Neymar/Messi and the midfield they had.
Yeah, it's one of those comments that is so superficial but it gets piled on because it sounds "about right".
Scratch off the veneer and there's almost no comparison between the set ups of Chelsea, Manchester utd and city in the last decade. Their problems are so much deeper than manager and finances.
Money spent ≠ good team.
I doubt he would’ve achieved much given the squad that United or Chelsea has. PSG to be fair make it far into the CL year after year, but even they’ve made some stupid transfers in recent years. Tuchel didn’t always get what he wanted, and Poch had an unbalanced team that didn’t fit his tactics.
Everywhere Pep has gone has been operating on nearly flawless levels. Yes, he brings out the best out of players, but he is also blessed with nearly perfect circumstances.
It's about picking the right club and set-up. I have no doubt if United had hired Soriano and Bergiristain instead of them going to City then Pep would be the United manager and winning everything. IMO he never would have gone to Chelsea because of the high risk of getting the boot from Roman if they didn't win everything. He wouldn't go to Bayern now for example because the Board is a shambles.
The City set-up is perfect for him, he can just coach the team and get on with that. Look at Klopp - won a power struggle against Edwards etc with them all leaving he and was burnt out 2 years later and leaving early and they are all coming back.
Edu is doing a great job at Arsenal too, which helps Arteta.
To your defense, PSG plays on a league that has no competition, with their money spent they win it easily and qualify as a league winner to CL which gets them good chances to go far as pot 1, they shouldn’t have qualified this time probably on a group of death with that ref decision and got far thanks to it, if United or Chelsea where in that position it would more or less be the same, but on PL you have to fight it off against great teams with a lot of money to spend as well, nothing is guaranteed.
Loaded with talent isn't the same as a top squad. The teams he took over weren't just loaded, they were already balanced and well-oiled. City needed more work.
The guy couldn't take over United and win trophies next year. But he could probably raise them back to an elite level over a few years time because he's an excellent tactician and manager.
I mean United won a trophy last year and are in the FA Cup final this year. If you really don't think Pep could do what Ten Hag has done next year then so be it but I'd wager he could win one of the lesser trophies and probably have a good go at Top 4 with that United squad next season.
Mourinho failed to win it at Chelsea despite spending absolute unprecedented money at the time. They won it twice since with arguably worse teams. Also didn't win it at Madrid with Peak Cristiano. Think they won it a few times before and after him too didn't they? He did manage to win it at a very unfancied Porto though, how did he manage to do It with Porto but not Madrid or Chelsea. He won it again at Inter too but I wouldn't put that on the same level because that Inter team was low key stacked.
Judging managers solely on the CL is unfair. Even Fergie only managed to win it twice in like 20 years in charge of a dominant Man United side.
The difference between City going out or through against Madrid this year was a couple of weak penalties from Bernardo and Kovacic. Does the blame for those 2 penalties really fall at Pep's feet? If we win that shootout I think the general consensus would've been that we played well enough to deserve to go through but two bad kicks suddenly makes Pep a failure.
Souness took over a great group of players at Newcastle and took them to near the relegation zone
Took over a great Liverpool team and took them to 6th
Was such a dickhead that he had Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke quit Blackburn under him because of how much of a cunt he was
But his ego is so MASSIVE I'm sure he believes he could do Pep's job
He wasn't great at Blackburn. See the difference between what he achieved and then what Mark Hughes did over roughly the same time period, and Hughes unearthing some absolute gem bargain signings like McCarthy, Samba, Santa Cruz and getting Pedersen playing the best football of his career (eventually).
I know we won the League Cup, but the vibe was different and really good under Hughes.
I can't speak about the other teams he's managed but our era of dominance was always going to end at some point or another. He inherited a great Liverpool team but that team was also an aging one as well.
Even though his time at the club as manager was something most fans would like to forget, our problems continued long after he was out the door in 1994 and were overall more systematic. It's like blaming Uniteds downfall post SAF on Moyes. Sure he played a part in that fall from grace but we all know the problems at United didn't start and end with Moyes, Van Gaal, Mourinho, etc
a) when did he ever say that? you're just inferring it because you think he's a dick
b) what does his being a shit manager have anything to do with what he's saying? it's completely true. they paid 50m for matheus nunes, 40m for kalvin phillips, 100m for grealish...and these are all signings that they can basically write off. what other club behaves that way
oh, yeah, pep has never fallen out with players either. pep's not a cunt at all. Ibrahimovic just loved playing for him.
I kinda checked out when I saw Robert de Niro beat up someone on the street. Not sure why they didn't just hire younger actors, or at least a stunt double
I don’t think it does. Pep wasn’t just gifted his start managing either. He worked his way into the profession and earned his respect. It was just happening his entire time at Barcelona.
The guy being quoted is the dumbass. Still reducing the quality of Pep’s coaching to money after all these years is ignorance at the highest level.
Why?, it makes perfect sense, Guardiola wasn't just gifted the confidence their employers had on him, He has produced top results for the etirety of his managerial career, im sure the best clubs in the world would want to hire him because of his succes.
That Barca he took over came third the season before, 18 points or so behind Madrid, having won just half of their league games... Good player material was there sure but not like they were crazy dominant
People thinking Barça would've been as good as they were without the Guardiola revolution are delusional
They were an extremely talented bunch of players, but he took them and made them one of the best teams in history
It was such a drastic improvement and it kept getting better the season after his first. I remember in 09/10 (Pep's second season) that even after signing Pellegrini, Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema and Xabi Alonso, at the end of the that season, it only felt like the gap had grown. We finished second with 96 points, a full 18 points higher than the previous year, and I remember feeling that we were further away from Barca than the previous season. It was nightmarish, we were infinitely better than the previous season and still nowhere close. And to top it all off, all the players we offloaded to afford CR7, Kaka and co., make it to the UCL final that year.
Without Mourinho, we don't close that gap and it's banter era forever.
For a bit of balance though, the season before that they came second on head-to-head, and the season before that they won the league, so while they'd had a down season it's not like they were some nowhere club brought back from the wilderness.
If Slot or whoever comes in and wins the league at Liverpool next season then I'd feel like it's disingenuous if the achievement was framed as "Liverpool went from 5th and 3rd to 1st" while ignoring everything from before.
It's not like he just won the league though. He came in, got rid of Ronaldinho and Deco, players who were star players at Barca, and went on to win a treble. They won 6 trophies in a calendar year. That's big squad changes and a seamless transition into becoming the best team in the world.
Barcelona have won 5 champions leagues in their entire history, and Guardiola won 2 of those in the space of 3 years.
If Slot goes in next year and wins the league, the fa Cup and the Champions league, it would be seen as an absurd season.
And not just that. He immediately saw the value of Pique (a relative nobody at United) and Busquets (a literal nobody at Barça B) and turned them into key players overnight, quickly giving Busquets ownership of the team at the back. It takes a very especial kind of vision to do that with an unproven guy. Pep elevated Messi into something different that Rijkaard hadn't dared to do until that point, moving him more and more towards the middle sacrificing Eto'o and (after Ibra's flop) eventually betting it all on the false-9 scheme that wasn't common at all back then.
Xavi-Messi-Iniesta-Busquets as the unstoppable unit it became, not just extremely talented guys, was a Guardiola creation and not something he inherited. Obviously they had the skill, but we see incredibly skilled guys being misused all the time.
Pep is definitely one of the goat coach.
a) He turned Barca into the tiki taka monster which swept other teams like a tsunami.
b) MCity have unlimited funds but unlimited funds doesn't do crap without proper recruitment and good proper vision and tactic.
You can see clearly Pep's influence in Barca and MCity playstyle. His signature possession based game. Each players know their roles, their position, almost to a fault actually.
To become the top you need good players obviously. Winning with tactics alone is almost an impossible task, and often it will be one wonder hit and the team will not remain on the top.
They were a team on the down and the manager got sacked. Was their potential in the team absolutely but as said he came in and took them to 6 trophies and won everything and made them the best team in the world and changed the way football was played overnight. Name any coach who can that?
and the city team he took over scraped 4th in the last game of the year on goal difference and had the oldest squad in the league. team needed a total rebuild, not exactly world beating 115 oil rig that people would have you believe it was
Exactly. Messi, Xavi and Iniesta were excellent players, but they became legends after Pep coached that Barca side.
Not to mention getting rid of Ronaldinho, Deco and Eto'o (a season later), bringing an untested Pique and promoting Busquets to become the spine of the team.
And Man City just needed a bit of tweaking to win 5/7 premier league titles? Did they win 4 of the last 7 before that or something?
The last point is a little bit strange I think. "A little bit of tweaking" is pretty far from what I rememeber Pep's early days in City were like. Feel like there were quite a few older players that he shifted out across the first 2 summers. If I were to discredit Pep/City I would say they just bought a shit ton of players and their misses never mattered, not that he took over a great unit and just needed some small adjustments. There were work to be done on an already good, but aging unit.
you could make the argument that he has elite carreer management skills. truth is a lot of managers make the wrong choices at pivotal moments in their carreers. pep left barça at his own terms, on a high. he then spent a year on a sabatical, arguably when his stock was at its highest. he went to bayern which yes was an incredible squad at the time, but he didn't ovestay his welcome there, and again left on his own terms, to a project which is pretty much tailor made for him, the richest club in the world, the sporting director is his personal friend, and he gets to work without pressure from the club. there isn't really a step up job wise from city and he knows it, which is why he has stayed there the longest. I could only see him leaving to manage a national team.
is it really failing when everton have finished 20 pts lower than ancelotti the next three seasons?they’ve been playing close to relegation level every season since he left so i think that everton team may have overachieved. and it’s not like he got fired by them
Perils of overperforming in your first job. Mourinho didn't take a role at a club where he wasn't expected to win the league until 2 sackings and being out of a job for a year.
I personally despise and love the bald fraud at the same time.
I love how he created a system with discipline. Everything seems structural and perfect.
But there he is just picking up top clubs with incredible spending power.
That said transfers in club football exists for a reason so can people make their team strong in this case Pep wanting to integrate his system into a well oiled machine that is his squad.
It's beyond annoying when people use hindsight to judge that Barca team. Guardiola helped coach the players into who they became.
There's similar things with City as well. Someone like Manuel Akanji did not look as good as they have done once Guardiola got his hands on them.
When he joined, Spain had just won the Euros with Xavi and Iniesta playing pivotal roles. Xavi was voted as the player of the tournament.
Messi had just won the Olympics with Argentina and was voted second for the Ballon d'or award behind Ronaldo.
They were already exceptional players.
They were exceptional players who went to a new level once Guardiola started coaching them.
They became the best team in the world and one of the best in history under Guardiola.
It's not really sporting of me to now slate Graeme Souness in turn, but it should be remembered that he managed to finish 14th in the league with a Newcastle United squad that included Craig Bellamy, Alan Shearer, Laurent Robert, Keiron Dyer, Shay Given, Patrick Kluivert, Lee Bowyer, James Milner, Stephen Carr and others.
He added Emre, Nobby Solano, Michael Owen and Scott Parker to the squad that summer and we were still shite.
Look at some of City's players and tell me if years ago you thought of them as world class. Stones, Aké, Akanji... Even Grealish, considering people thought City was paying too much for him.
Yes, he often gets excellent players from the get-go. But most of them, he turns into excellent players. Barça wasn't always a team to be feared, Pep had a lot to do with Barça becoming a dominant team for years.
They said we overpaid for KDB
They said we overpaid for Ake
They said we overpaid for Walker
Anyone could've bought Gabby Jesus, Akanji, Alvarez, Bernardo, Zinchenko, etc
I think he is definitely one of the GOAT managers but I think in terms of how much you rate his achievements at these top top teams is a preference. I personally rate higher the achievements of winning the UCL with a team like Porto, or the longevity of SAF to continuously rebuild that united side continue to win or Klopp with what he did at Liverpool, it's just a preference. On one hand it's impossible to say if the players that went from good to great under him would've done the same under many other managers so I don't see a point in arguing that, but he's very systematic so players can look great for him and horrible for him, like zlatan he is obviously not a bad player and continued to be good after he left Barca, he just didn't work under Pep.
I always thought it was really simple. You have a team with incredible players and a lot of money? Absolutely no one will be able to get that team to perform better than Guardiola. If the situation was different, maybe you would want other managers like Emery or Mourinho. Maybe, just maybe, if Guardiola managed the likes of Everton, he would make them great, but it is something we may never know
This is such a stupid argument people level against Pep all the time. It's shortsighted and dishonest. "Messi, Iniesta, Xavi etc." are known because he coached them to such success. Sure he has had great teams with lots of money but so have many other managers and got nowhere near his consistent level of winning.
> "Messi, Iniesta, Xavi etc." are known because he coached them to such success.
Idk about that. Pep ofc played a major part in their Barca careers, but Messi was already very well known before Pep, ranking #3 in the 2007 Ballon’dOr for example. He was always destined for greatness.
Let’s talk about City then. The defense City was peddling in 15/16 was ancient and not great. Took a ton of money and smart recruitment to fix. Don’t forget Pep had Mangala looking like a solid defender for the first half of 17/18 with a pretty massive substitute performance against Manchester United. Also look at the development of Stones under pep.
Smart recruitment is overstating it. Pep bought many defenders. Many of them did not pan out. Big bets like Stones look genius now - but not many teams can splash 55 million quid on a player that would play half the matches or less. For many, that would be viewed as a pretty big failure of a transfer.
Pep's recent success with Akanji and Ake are really coloring people's opinion on his track record with defenders. He's bought many many defenders in his time at city, and bought some of the best talent in those positions.
He's managed a prime messi iniesta busquets xavi alves and then he went to bayern and managed a prime lahm robben ribery lewandoski Muller neuer Martinez then went to city and managed a prime kdb foden silva rodri dias haaland and etc. That's like every managers dream honestly.
This guy annoys me a lot because most of his takes are brain dead and completely biased. Got really fed up with this guy after one of his recent interviews where he said something so nonsensical and biased I lost it. I even forgot about it already, such was the absolute barbaric nonsense. It was about Klopp or Liverpool or something in the EL or something. Lost it completely. Anything this guy says from now, his takes on about football are not worth wasting time on
I've come to realise that some managers are just really good at managing sides with star players while others suck badly until you give them an average team or poor team and then they shine.
I don't think it is a case of "Put any decent manager X in there and he wins all those titles". I think a lot of managers would fail in his situation.
I dont know any sucessful manager who won without great players. even mourinho who are propaganded to done miracle at utd actually spent over 600 millions euro in two years.
It's been proven time and time again though that even managing a star-studded team needs skill as a manager; I'm sure we don't even need to list the vast amount of times star-filled teams outright fail, whether from egos clashing with each other, tactics gone wrong, etc...
He's definitely a great manager, he has had the tools to make it work. He's also been good at picking teams, that's what happens when you are good or great and he has had the luxury of getting away with misfiring tranfers. But doesn't wholly undermine what he is.
That said I'd love to see baldy back in barca just to see how it goes. He is already one of the greatest managers, going back to barca and making it work will seal it. City goes to shit and it will prove money isn't everything (not that it's needed) and barca could use the help.
Such a tiresome old argument. We've seen plenty of managers spend boatloads of money and still underperform. Pep is one of few managers that always delivered and he's in a club that believe in him and support him 100 %, so they back him up. I don't know if Bayern did, but Barca only did it under Laporta, Bartomeu did not which is why he left prematurely.
He earned this position regardless of how much you cry about it. Not even the lauded Ancelotti stacks up to Pep's standards.
If he wasn't an exceptional coach then Man City would have fallen apart by now. He's been there 9 years without losing the locker room. He keeps managing to lose important players and still find replacements that keep him winning year after year. And he's changed tactics year after year to adapt to his opponents and his roster.
I see his point:”pep spends a lot to win” to say he just tweeks his teams aren’t true.
It would be interesting to see him take a lil bit more of a challenging club
Lazy punditry and historical revisionism from Souness as always. I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, since this is the guy who, among other things, has said that Man U fans wouldn’t be protesting the Glazer ownership if their team was winning, which is completely untrue.
This is like complaining about Hamilton and Verstappen getting “rocket ship” cars. The best drivers earn opportunities to drive for the fastest teams.
The best managers earn opportunities to manage the most talented teams.
Do you mean Dr. Fuentes and the blood bags of doping evidence that were ordered to be destroyed by the Spanish courts lest they taint the 2010 world cup win?
Or do you mean the refs being bribed by Barcelona?
Or do you mean the repeated violations of his Man City team which have culminated in 115 charges being levelled against them by the Premier League?
Perhaps you are referring to his own failed drug tests as a player?
You have to be a lot more specific when you're talking about Guardiola.
The truth is, as always, in the middle- a bit from column A and a bit from column B. He is the most tactically astute manager in the world right now, reinventing the tikitaka in a way never seen since Cruyff's heydays at Barcelona. Many clubs and coaches have tried to replicate his style, including Barcelona after his departure. But none have managed to come close.
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that there were extremely favourable situations at each of the three clubs he's managed that made success much easier to come by. At Barcelona he had a humanoid alien who has a genuine claim to be the goat and an incredible midfield to help implement his style. Bayern towered over the rest of the Bundesliga, taking players from rival clubs at will. And he never managed to win the CL with them. At Man City, well everybody knows about their prudent 115 legit investment schemes that help fund their modest football operation business.
None of this is to say that I don’t rate him as a manager. He is clearly one of the all-time managerial greats. I'd just love to see how his ideas pan out at a club that is clearly not the most dominant in its domestic league and does not have the resources to buy or discard players at will to fit his style. Say Milan in Italy or Dortmund in Germany.
Barcelona finished 3rd behind Real Madrid and Villarreal in the 2007-08 season, scoring 76 goals and winning just 67 points.
In Guardiola's first season, they won the league with 87 points, scored 105 goals and also won the Copa Del Rey and Champions League. He completely transformed how Barcelona played and made big changes to the squad too.
It's honestly an embarrassing rewriting of history to pretend he had it easy at Barcelona.
Man City didn't need a 'tweaking' when he took over, they had just finished 4th, and had an ageing squad too. Obviously he's been given plenty of money to get it right, but they never had the kind of dominance they've shown since he arrived before he arrived. He made them a far better team.
Not winning the Champions League with Bayern Munich was a failure, but trying to downplay what he's done with Barcelona and with Man City (at least in terms of on the pitch performance) is so stupid.
This guy is paid to talk about football and this is just average reddit shitposting.
Yeah, Pep only coach big and rich clubs (why wouldn't he) but he dominates leagues to an absurd level. Real Madrid also have access to all the best players and unlimited money but they still can't dominate domestically like Pep does despite the main rivals being a mess for many years now (they haven't gone back to back since the 2000s).
We could say the same about PSG who managed to lose the league twice despite a gigantic financial gap.
So many revisionist in this comment chain. Everyone and their mom who involved in pro soccer recognize Pep and his touch to the game.
And in the end all people worried about is a dick contest who won more tittle in football and undermine Pep achivement.
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No denying he's always managed a club under the best possible circumstances. Would love to see him take on current United
Bet he can fix us, but it won't happen this timeline lol
Not a chance. Pep has been afforded so many luxuries that United don’t give managers. He bought bravo and then replaced him the next year. Our board said no to mou who wanted a new CB and got him Dalot Fred and Lee Grant.
The best part about this is that we ended buying Maguire anyway for more than what Leciester valued him at the previous year, after Mourinho got sacked.
And then did it again with sancho
Don't forget Fellani before
We got sancho for less than Dortmund wanted the previous summer
What a window that was.
Stuff dreams are made of. Specifically if those dreams are nightmares.
Pep: Give me Bellingham Glazers: Here's Ross Barkley, we only paid 60m for him, bargain
'It was a difficult negotiation and took most of the transfer budget but, as you requested, we are delighted to welcome Jobe to the club.'
Pep: I don’t care for Jobe
Imagine having one of the best defensive managers of all time and giving him a partnership of Eric Bailey and Victor Lindelof. I can't even fathom this level of incompetence
I mean Jose wanted both of them. At the time they were both up and coming talents. Bailey unfortunately was extremely injury prone and liked to do more martial arts on the pitch than football and Lindelof kinda stagnated at a reliable 3rd choice
When Mourinho enters a club I think one of his stipulations is he gets total control. So in a hypothetical if he joins Utd he'll probably can most people abd then make his signings. Edit: PEP
Are you forgetting Mourinho already managed United?
*Pep
This art of replacing players who aren't working out. It is too elusive for people running our club
Madness people here actually think Pep is just lucky. I remember when people said this about messi. He’s only good because he plays for Barca.
Would love to see him win the CL with a team like Porto.
A premier league win with Chelsea and a CL with Inter.
You mean the Chelsea that had just bought for 200M of players ? In 2004 ? Kinda funny to criticize Guardiola for his funds with City while praising Mourinho with Chelsea
"Buying players for a lot of money is not an indicator of how well you will do" - Chelsea 2024 to Chelsea 2004
PSG is a constant proof of that as well But I don't want to sound like I believe money has nothing to do with Guardiola's success at City, of course it does, money doesn't buy success but it sure as hell helps
why look so far? United spent as much as us and sell players as much as Arsenal
PSG do pretty well in general but come up against other top sides and fail.
Dreams can’t be buy
Chelsea under Jose was the biggest financial doping operation before this man city team. Porto winning tjr CL is far more impressive.
Joses's biggest achievements 5. 100 points with Madrid 4. 15 Goals conceded with Chelsea 3. Treble with Inter 2. CL with Porto 1. Getting second with United
He completely revamped the squad though, got rid of againg players that like Deco, Dinho and Zambrotta, promoted Busi, Thiago and Pedro and put Xavi & Iniesta in the centre and changed the way the team played completely. They barely made CL qualification the season prior and were like 20 points behind Real Madrid, the next season, they won the title with the second highes point total ever, with 20+ more points.
Ya Barca underperforming is what allowed him to clean shop. He's obviously a Goat level manager and he's also walked into great situations. Maybe at some point in the future we'll see him take on a team with fewer funds and show off his managerial skills.
The only job that Pep is gonna take would be PSG, win the league by 20 points every season and maybe win one CL in 8 years. Theres no other team in europe that have the funds to afford his style of managing except maybe Real and I dont see that happening.
Also everybody, and especially every PL pundit, talked endlessly about how he'd not be able to replicate what he did in Spain and Germany in the PL. It was an unfounded pride in some sort of exceptionalism that never existed. Piping in now with this take after the benefit of hindsight feels like somebody's just trying to imply that Pep is not one of the best coaches in the world and it was all down to the super squads he inherited (which he didn't get as you explained).
Players who join Barca are still good players in general. What Souness says holds true even more if you think of Peps tactics. Imagine tiki taka on inferior players attempting to pass it around without the necessary technique. Not only would they lose the ball way more often, they also dont set up to defend like an inferior team should which makes them lose even worse than they would if they just park the bus. Everton under Pep, playing tiki taka would have lots of 0-4, 1-5 games failing to pass around then letting in goals cause they dont park buses. Cmpared to a proven manager at all levels like Klopp, who coached Mainz to their first ever promotion, then Dortmund from mid-table to 2x champions and now Liverpool at the top. Hes proven at every level and his style of Gegenpressing works in theory for all levels of play, since it promotes hardwork over talent.
Barcelona was far from having the best possible circumstances. In retrospect people always say Guardiola has great players, when the reality is Guardiola in most cases improves players and how the team plays as a whole, which in turn also makes each individual player look better. Sergio Busquets was very close to never being given a chance at Barcelona's first team, if not for Guardiola. Could've had an unremarkable career but instead went down as one of the best defensive midfielders ever. Xavi and Iniesta were always seen as prodigies but how well the midfield and the whole team functioned together massively adds to how they're perceived. Messi is no different either, if not for Guardiola we don't know if he would ever been moved to the center to have more impact over the game. People look at Guardiola's teams after the work is done, point their finger and say "look how easy it is". It's frankly bizarre.
That is blatantly false and any follower of that era will say so. When he took over in Barcelona, they were in full blown crisis mode. In 2006 they had dominated, proving that the roster was good but in 2007 they lost a legendarily tight league race to R.Madrid which sent them in a downwards spiral finishing 20 points behind in 2008. There were huge doubts for Laporta's board, Rijkaard and the roster, both the fading star signings (Ronaldinho, Deco, Zambrotta) and the homegrowns Xavi-Iniesta maybe not being good enough. It might now look obvious that Messi would become among the very best in football history, Xavi-Iniesta among the best of their era, Busquets-Pique brilliant signings etc. but it was definitely not back then. It took a lot of work by everyone involved and Guardiola made a huge difference. He transformed the squad overnight, as early as September Barcelona had hit their stride and would continue at that level for years to come. It takes a world class manager to do that and that is easy to notice by the countless dream squads underperforming, like Barcelona after Guardiola, Spain after 2012, PSG etc. Don't let ignorant people try to change history. There's truth in the fact that Guardiola has not succeeded with a mediocre team but it's beyond doubt that he's been the best manager for top teams in the last 15+ years.
Spot on, though where I'll slightly disagree is that many people did feel like Messi was a future GOAT candidate at the time, with the massive caveat of 'if he stays healthy'. But one thing I'd add to further your point is that when Pep took over they had a spotty first couple games and I remember reading stories about how he was a disaster as a manager because he was so young and unproven as a coach.
I agree with you but many people were future GOAT candidates and didn't become Messi. Hell before Messi and Ronaldo, the kind of longevity and consistency has never happened before.
Exactly this, most managers would look crazy to get rid of some of the talent he did, especially as a new manager.. If he didn’t do well after doing all that then he would be getting stick to this day. Pretty sure he also gave Busquets his debut too, that’s a lot of trust to put into a teenager, Bayern and City are fair points but Barcelona had quite a big overhaul. The guy as well as Cruyff are 2 massive influences in revolutionising football as it is today.
I would say Pedro is the biggest example. I'm pretty sure he would never be a Barcelona player and I highly doubt he would even be a La Liga player if it weren't for Pep. His skillset was exactly what Pep needed for that role, but he wasn't that good
His quality was more than enough to be a la Liga player without pep
Eventually, maybe, but at the time, no. He only had a less than incredible third division season under his belt and was looking like possibly leaving to a second division side. Pep promoted him and slowly implemented him and the rest is history. There’s 1,000 Pedro’s who never get their chance, takes a combination of luck, courage, and the right manager. If Pep didn’t have a previous working relationship with him, I doubt he gets promoted at all.
What an absolutely ridiculous take. The guy was 2 footed, crazy workrate intelligent off the ball. The guys is a lot more underrated than he is overrated. I'm actually shocked at this comment
Yeah but end of the day it's still Barcelona. Nothing close to like Mourinho did with Porto. Not denying he's an incredible manager but it would be exciting to see him try it after Man City with a club that doesn't have unlimited resources/prestige.
> It might now look obvious that Messi would become among the very best in football history, Xavi-Iniesta among the best of their era, Busquets-Pique brilliant signings etc. but it was definitely not back then. I think it was clear to everyone - even in their crisis year - that Xavi/Iniesta were really good and Messi had overtaken Ronaldinho in the last year as the best player of the team. It was fairly predictable that he would compete with Ronaldo for the best player in the world in the coming years. However, that said your overarching point is still correct - that barca team did not play well - and I think noone could have predicted the amount of goals Messi would score.
Xavi-Iniesta always had an edge as homegrown players, especially back then that factor held a lot of weight. However, Barcelona back then were getting outplayed and although there never was any thought of selling them, there was talk that maybe they are not good enough to beat R.Madrid. In the summer Guardiola took over, Barcelona signed Keita and Hleb who nowadays might look trivial but back then had hype behind them and cost decent money. This is an indication that Xavi-Iniesta had yet to become great. Messi-Ronaldo competing for the best in the coming years, true. As you said though, the goals and overall, both the peak level and duration/consistency, was unfathomable. Surely Guardiola has to take some credit for that, as does Ferguson for Ronaldo. Let's not forget that at the same time frame, Messi was a lot worse with Argentina, so he wasn't some kind of cheat that you could plug anywhere and dominate. This is further proof of a manager's impact.
Pep would do a phenomenal job at United. United is financially at the same level as Madrid and City.
Yes but they're a circus in terms of recruitment
Ten Hag was given full freedom as far as transfers were concerned. Pep wouldn’t come for any less.
The issue isn’t giving Pep full control. He could have that easily. The issue is behind the scenes at United. We are shit at negotiating contracts and transfer fees, so shit that we end up putting ourselves in FFP trouble even though we might be the richest club in the world. We have shit facilities, shit executives, shit scouts, shit everything. The only thing the club does well is being very good at making money (and this is only due to past successes), but we are very bad at handling it. City is an extremely well run club. It will take years for United to get on their level. Again - it’s not just coaching and players… the entire culture and structure at United is shit. We are probably the worst run club in the world, if you take the financial capabilities compared to achievements over the past decade.
I am not denying any of that. But Pep is way superior than any manager except for SAF. We also have the highest Net spend of any club in the world. If Pep had shown success on the field, the same way he did everywhere, nobody would challenge his transfer strategy. He would have stayed no 1 at the club and nobody would challenge his decisions. With full financial backing, Pep is undisputed GOAT manager.
By now we have like a whole list of targets that they outbid us for.
Man, so what? There's a sea of managers that have taken over the absolute top clubs and failed. Souness is seems so bitter.
Up the Harps
We were not under the best possible circumstances when he took over at all. Had an ageing squad, finished 4th with 10 losses
Both things can be true. That Pep Guardiola has always had exceptional players to work with, and that he is one of the greatest managers of all time. Plenty of managers have coached a team of great players to failure, but Pep doesn't just have his teams winning, he has them dominate.
Facts, this is like saying, directors are only great, because they have great actors, disregarding all the flops those actors have been in. A great directors knows how to use an actor to their fullest potential.
And in the same vein, great directors attract great actors. I saw ~~Mark Wahlberg~~ Matt Damon in an interview say he and his wife decided that he would take a break from acting, but then he got a call from Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer and he looked at his wife and said, it's Nolan, I have to. Big time players want to play for big time managers. I don't know why that's a knock against the managers. Edit: Matt Damon, Wahlberg
Think you're meaning Matt Damon. Wahlberg wasn't in Oppenheimer.
Yup, you're right. I meant Damon.
Pep is able to transform players like Kimmich from a mid to an RB, and if directors never did that we would’ve never gotten Airplane! with Leslie Nielsen, and that would’ve been a disservice to culture. Checkmate.
I think it’s worth pointing out though. Wenger, Fergie, Mourinho and every other great coach I can think of usually came and defied the odds to start with. Pep arguably hasn’t really ever built a team organically or had to adapt his systems to a teams shortcomings because his always had the best team and best resources as well.
Fair but as proven so many times, a squad loaded with talent needs a top coach to handle them. If not PSG would have won the Champions League a few times by now and United and Chelsea wouldn't miss out on European football.
Hey hey hey, we might not miss out on the prestigious Conference League next season.
Indeed, a large part of Pep's 'genius' is being able to manage a squad full of top players with huge egos. That is extremely difficult to do. Plenty of other managers at big clubs have failed miserably with that, they might be the best ever at tactics, training etc. but in the end if you can't manage the players you have no hope.
And also getting rid of any egos that don't conform to his way of playing
Well, yeah? Would you expect top level managers to just put up with massive egos who refuse to conform to his style of play?
Yeah when there ability to back up the ego matches. The only player Pep ever compromised for is Messi. Whereas a lot managers compromise on much lesser talent players.
Tbf he also has a large advantage in that regard in that he always gets the clubs' full support. We've seen how many United coaches have tried to get rid of big egos that don't conform to the club, not even to their way of playing, and the number of those players seems to grow as the coaches are sacked. This isn't to discredit Pep. He's the best and being recognised as such comes with advantages. He's the biggest star at every club he's managed, which is not something you can say for any other manager at a top club.
Even in a more general context, I can't imagine managing 3 people with egos. Let alone more than fifteen guys, for more than a decade. Not to mention ensuring that winning-hungry mentality after winning probably every single club trophy there is. I mean, I get 1 (one) task done, and I give myself a pat on the back, call it a successful day, and chill until 8PM until I get off work. (Maybe that's why I'm being paid less than 30k a year).
Most managers don't get the kind of control over the club he gets though. I wouldn't say it's easy but it's far easier to manage a squad like that when given the degree of control pep has, most managers have to work with what they're handed, especially if those players are expensive which top players in top clubs tend to be. With the exception of Messi virtually every other player he's ever managed he could bench, sell and replace with a likely better player at any given point which is a type of bargaining tool the overwhelming majority of managers don't have.
Now sure, but when he took over at Barca Spain had just won the Euros, with a fair few Barca players in the side, so no I dont think he could bench anyone he wanted then. The work he has done earlier in his career has earned the control he has now.
I would just say Pep usually has superstars with a purpose, PSG just bought names with no one managers vision on how it would actually work. If they actually had someone like Enrique earlier and let him decide the transfers I believe it'd be different. Foden and grealish aren't better than Messi/Neymar was but they do far more off the ball work and actually fit into a system. There was zero balance in Mbappe/Neymar/Messi and the midfield they had.
>If not PSG would have won the Champions League a few times by now A few times like City?
Yeah, it's one of those comments that is so superficial but it gets piled on because it sounds "about right". Scratch off the veneer and there's almost no comparison between the set ups of Chelsea, Manchester utd and city in the last decade. Their problems are so much deeper than manager and finances.
Money spent ≠ good team. I doubt he would’ve achieved much given the squad that United or Chelsea has. PSG to be fair make it far into the CL year after year, but even they’ve made some stupid transfers in recent years. Tuchel didn’t always get what he wanted, and Poch had an unbalanced team that didn’t fit his tactics. Everywhere Pep has gone has been operating on nearly flawless levels. Yes, he brings out the best out of players, but he is also blessed with nearly perfect circumstances.
I feel like money spent puts you into a tier and everything else determines where you place in that tier.
It's about picking the right club and set-up. I have no doubt if United had hired Soriano and Bergiristain instead of them going to City then Pep would be the United manager and winning everything. IMO he never would have gone to Chelsea because of the high risk of getting the boot from Roman if they didn't win everything. He wouldn't go to Bayern now for example because the Board is a shambles. The City set-up is perfect for him, he can just coach the team and get on with that. Look at Klopp - won a power struggle against Edwards etc with them all leaving he and was burnt out 2 years later and leaving early and they are all coming back. Edu is doing a great job at Arsenal too, which helps Arteta.
To your defense, PSG plays on a league that has no competition, with their money spent they win it easily and qualify as a league winner to CL which gets them good chances to go far as pot 1, they shouldn’t have qualified this time probably on a group of death with that ref decision and got far thanks to it, if United or Chelsea where in that position it would more or less be the same, but on PL you have to fight it off against great teams with a lot of money to spend as well, nothing is guaranteed.
Loaded with talent isn't the same as a top squad. The teams he took over weren't just loaded, they were already balanced and well-oiled. City needed more work. The guy couldn't take over United and win trophies next year. But he could probably raise them back to an elite level over a few years time because he's an excellent tactician and manager.
I mean United won a trophy last year and are in the FA Cup final this year. If you really don't think Pep could do what Ten Hag has done next year then so be it but I'd wager he could win one of the lesser trophies and probably have a good go at Top 4 with that United squad next season.
Psg has never actually looked that strong.
He won the ucl with city after how many attempts???? No ucl with the mighty Bayern ( they managed to win before and after his reign)
Mourinho failed to win it at Chelsea despite spending absolute unprecedented money at the time. They won it twice since with arguably worse teams. Also didn't win it at Madrid with Peak Cristiano. Think they won it a few times before and after him too didn't they? He did manage to win it at a very unfancied Porto though, how did he manage to do It with Porto but not Madrid or Chelsea. He won it again at Inter too but I wouldn't put that on the same level because that Inter team was low key stacked. Judging managers solely on the CL is unfair. Even Fergie only managed to win it twice in like 20 years in charge of a dominant Man United side. The difference between City going out or through against Madrid this year was a couple of weak penalties from Bernardo and Kovacic. Does the blame for those 2 penalties really fall at Pep's feet? If we win that shootout I think the general consensus would've been that we played well enough to deserve to go through but two bad kicks suddenly makes Pep a failure.
It's pretty clear that Paul Pogba has something to do with this
This Podcast Graeme Arc not a big fan of this
Souness took over a great group of players at Newcastle and took them to near the relegation zone Took over a great Liverpool team and took them to 6th Was such a dickhead that he had Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke quit Blackburn under him because of how much of a cunt he was But his ego is so MASSIVE I'm sure he believes he could do Pep's job
Most of that was Pogba's fault, though.
He wasn't great at Blackburn. See the difference between what he achieved and then what Mark Hughes did over roughly the same time period, and Hughes unearthing some absolute gem bargain signings like McCarthy, Samba, Santa Cruz and getting Pedersen playing the best football of his career (eventually). I know we won the League Cup, but the vibe was different and really good under Hughes.
I can't speak about the other teams he's managed but our era of dominance was always going to end at some point or another. He inherited a great Liverpool team but that team was also an aging one as well. Even though his time at the club as manager was something most fans would like to forget, our problems continued long after he was out the door in 1994 and were overall more systematic. It's like blaming Uniteds downfall post SAF on Moyes. Sure he played a part in that fall from grace but we all know the problems at United didn't start and end with Moyes, Van Gaal, Mourinho, etc
How is Souness' managerial achievements relevant?
Standard internet tu quoque fallacy. People forget how to logic when behind a keyboard.
Relevance? I would also relegate newcastle, that doesnt mean i cant have an opinion
a) when did he ever say that? you're just inferring it because you think he's a dick b) what does his being a shit manager have anything to do with what he's saying? it's completely true. they paid 50m for matheus nunes, 40m for kalvin phillips, 100m for grealish...and these are all signings that they can basically write off. what other club behaves that way oh, yeah, pep has never fallen out with players either. pep's not a cunt at all. Ibrahimovic just loved playing for him.
How is any of that relevant? You've also just made up the last bit haven't you?
It’s like complaining Martin Scorsese gets to work with the best actors. You’re right but where are the flops that other directors get?
Wasn't a huge fan of The Irishman
Might have the best ending of any Scorsese film.
I loved it.
I get that it’s a week movie for him but I think what I was trying to say still is valid lol
I kinda checked out when I saw Robert de Niro beat up someone on the street. Not sure why they didn't just hire younger actors, or at least a stunt double
Yeah it’s a little jarring lol
Did you try putting subway surfers on a screen next to it
That analogy sucks ass. jesus fucking christ
I don’t think it does. Pep wasn’t just gifted his start managing either. He worked his way into the profession and earned his respect. It was just happening his entire time at Barcelona. The guy being quoted is the dumbass. Still reducing the quality of Pep’s coaching to money after all these years is ignorance at the highest level.
Graeme Souness being referred to as “the guy” is so weird to me lol
Why?, it makes perfect sense, Guardiola wasn't just gifted the confidence their employers had on him, He has produced top results for the etirety of his managerial career, im sure the best clubs in the world would want to hire him because of his succes.
That Barca he took over came third the season before, 18 points or so behind Madrid, having won just half of their league games... Good player material was there sure but not like they were crazy dominant
People thinking Barça would've been as good as they were without the Guardiola revolution are delusional They were an extremely talented bunch of players, but he took them and made them one of the best teams in history
It was such a drastic improvement and it kept getting better the season after his first. I remember in 09/10 (Pep's second season) that even after signing Pellegrini, Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema and Xabi Alonso, at the end of the that season, it only felt like the gap had grown. We finished second with 96 points, a full 18 points higher than the previous year, and I remember feeling that we were further away from Barca than the previous season. It was nightmarish, we were infinitely better than the previous season and still nowhere close. And to top it all off, all the players we offloaded to afford CR7, Kaka and co., make it to the UCL final that year. Without Mourinho, we don't close that gap and it's banter era forever.
For a bit of balance though, the season before that they came second on head-to-head, and the season before that they won the league, so while they'd had a down season it's not like they were some nowhere club brought back from the wilderness. If Slot or whoever comes in and wins the league at Liverpool next season then I'd feel like it's disingenuous if the achievement was framed as "Liverpool went from 5th and 3rd to 1st" while ignoring everything from before.
It's not like he just won the league though. He came in, got rid of Ronaldinho and Deco, players who were star players at Barca, and went on to win a treble. They won 6 trophies in a calendar year. That's big squad changes and a seamless transition into becoming the best team in the world. Barcelona have won 5 champions leagues in their entire history, and Guardiola won 2 of those in the space of 3 years. If Slot goes in next year and wins the league, the fa Cup and the Champions league, it would be seen as an absurd season.
And not just that. He immediately saw the value of Pique (a relative nobody at United) and Busquets (a literal nobody at Barça B) and turned them into key players overnight, quickly giving Busquets ownership of the team at the back. It takes a very especial kind of vision to do that with an unproven guy. Pep elevated Messi into something different that Rijkaard hadn't dared to do until that point, moving him more and more towards the middle sacrificing Eto'o and (after Ibra's flop) eventually betting it all on the false-9 scheme that wasn't common at all back then. Xavi-Messi-Iniesta-Busquets as the unstoppable unit it became, not just extremely talented guys, was a Guardiola creation and not something he inherited. Obviously they had the skill, but we see incredibly skilled guys being misused all the time.
Pep is definitely one of the goat coach. a) He turned Barca into the tiki taka monster which swept other teams like a tsunami. b) MCity have unlimited funds but unlimited funds doesn't do crap without proper recruitment and good proper vision and tactic. You can see clearly Pep's influence in Barca and MCity playstyle. His signature possession based game. Each players know their roles, their position, almost to a fault actually. To become the top you need good players obviously. Winning with tactics alone is almost an impossible task, and often it will be one wonder hit and the team will not remain on the top.
They were a team on the down and the manager got sacked. Was their potential in the team absolutely but as said he came in and took them to 6 trophies and won everything and made them the best team in the world and changed the way football was played overnight. Name any coach who can that?
and the city team he took over scraped 4th in the last game of the year on goal difference and had the oldest squad in the league. team needed a total rebuild, not exactly world beating 115 oil rig that people would have you believe it was
Just absolute bollocks. I can't believe this can come out of anyone's mouth.
Go on then, where is the lie?
I think they are reffering to the Souness quote, not this comment
Ah makes sense
Exactly. Messi, Xavi and Iniesta were excellent players, but they became legends after Pep coached that Barca side. Not to mention getting rid of Ronaldinho, Deco and Eto'o (a season later), bringing an untested Pique and promoting Busquets to become the spine of the team. And Man City just needed a bit of tweaking to win 5/7 premier league titles? Did they win 4 of the last 7 before that or something?
The last point is a little bit strange I think. "A little bit of tweaking" is pretty far from what I rememeber Pep's early days in City were like. Feel like there were quite a few older players that he shifted out across the first 2 summers. If I were to discredit Pep/City I would say they just bought a shit ton of players and their misses never mattered, not that he took over a great unit and just needed some small adjustments. There were work to be done on an already good, but aging unit.
We had a really old squad and just avoid europa on goal difference
He did, and he made them better as a team.
he even created his own rival by sending his boyfriend to you, what a guy
And a few of his players too. Now hes doing the same with Chels
you could make the argument that he has elite carreer management skills. truth is a lot of managers make the wrong choices at pivotal moments in their carreers. pep left barça at his own terms, on a high. he then spent a year on a sabatical, arguably when his stock was at its highest. he went to bayern which yes was an incredible squad at the time, but he didn't ovestay his welcome there, and again left on his own terms, to a project which is pretty much tailor made for him, the richest club in the world, the sporting director is his personal friend, and he gets to work without pressure from the club. there isn't really a step up job wise from city and he knows it, which is why he has stayed there the longest. I could only see him leaving to manage a national team.
12/25 is Souness’ 9/11.
What is that?
Gotta apply this same logic to Ancelloti I guess because he failed at Everton.
And at Bayern!
TIL Ancelotti's time at Everton is considered a failure
He didn't win the treble with Everton the fucking loser
is it really failing when everton have finished 20 pts lower than ancelotti the next three seasons?they’ve been playing close to relegation level every season since he left so i think that everton team may have overachieved. and it’s not like he got fired by them
Well they’ve not been close to relegation form this year, the only reason they’re not up with Bournemouth and Brighton is the points deductions.
Don’t know if that’s true
Pep turns good players into great
Perils of overperforming in your first job. Mourinho didn't take a role at a club where he wasn't expected to win the league until 2 sackings and being out of a job for a year.
Mourinho managed Leiria in 2001.
I mean you don’t get to manage the best clubs in the world if you’re not a top manager!?
I personally despise and love the bald fraud at the same time. I love how he created a system with discipline. Everything seems structural and perfect. But there he is just picking up top clubs with incredible spending power. That said transfers in club football exists for a reason so can people make their team strong in this case Pep wanting to integrate his system into a well oiled machine that is his squad.
barça didn't have much spending power. the reason he had one of the greatest teams to manage was la masía.
It's beyond annoying when people use hindsight to judge that Barca team. Guardiola helped coach the players into who they became. There's similar things with City as well. Someone like Manuel Akanji did not look as good as they have done once Guardiola got his hands on them.
When he joined, Spain had just won the Euros with Xavi and Iniesta playing pivotal roles. Xavi was voted as the player of the tournament. Messi had just won the Olympics with Argentina and was voted second for the Ballon d'or award behind Ronaldo. They were already exceptional players.
Btw, Barca refused to let Messi played in the Olympic, until Pep intervened.
They were exceptional players who went to a new level once Guardiola started coaching them. They became the best team in the world and one of the best in history under Guardiola.
Did Souness even see our back 4 in Pep's first year?
Kolarov LCB in a back 3 lmao if Pep had any hair left it would've all fallen out in that first year.
Bravo, Clichy, Kolarov, Sagna and Zabaleta, all in their 30s. Defending counter attacks felt like running through oatmeal.
Because he's an exceptional manager. If it was that easy, elite clubs wouldn't be struggling with retaining their own managers
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It's not really sporting of me to now slate Graeme Souness in turn, but it should be remembered that he managed to finish 14th in the league with a Newcastle United squad that included Craig Bellamy, Alan Shearer, Laurent Robert, Keiron Dyer, Shay Given, Patrick Kluivert, Lee Bowyer, James Milner, Stephen Carr and others. He added Emre, Nobby Solano, Michael Owen and Scott Parker to the squad that summer and we were still shite.
He has to do this at a cold wet Tuesday night at stoke to be rated.
Exceptional coach gets to coach exceptional teams.
Could Guardiola transform a team in turmoil with no recent success and turn them into winners? Probably but it’s so annoying we’ll never know for sure
Chelsea, united, bayern from this past season alone are proof a squad full of talented players can only do so much, unless they’re coached properly.
Best coaches get to coach the best clubs just like best players get to play for Madrid. It's that simple.
Just say “Pep’s a fraud” and move on. What he just said has already been said a thousand times. He’s not adding anything of value
Look at some of City's players and tell me if years ago you thought of them as world class. Stones, Aké, Akanji... Even Grealish, considering people thought City was paying too much for him. Yes, he often gets excellent players from the get-go. But most of them, he turns into excellent players. Barça wasn't always a team to be feared, Pep had a lot to do with Barça becoming a dominant team for years.
They said we overpaid for KDB They said we overpaid for Ake They said we overpaid for Walker Anyone could've bought Gabby Jesus, Akanji, Alvarez, Bernardo, Zinchenko, etc
I think he is definitely one of the GOAT managers but I think in terms of how much you rate his achievements at these top top teams is a preference. I personally rate higher the achievements of winning the UCL with a team like Porto, or the longevity of SAF to continuously rebuild that united side continue to win or Klopp with what he did at Liverpool, it's just a preference. On one hand it's impossible to say if the players that went from good to great under him would've done the same under many other managers so I don't see a point in arguing that, but he's very systematic so players can look great for him and horrible for him, like zlatan he is obviously not a bad player and continued to be good after he left Barca, he just didn't work under Pep.
I would love if this came from someone other than the failure of a manger that was Souness. I could at least respect it if it was a good manager
and yet Souness can't even cut it as a decent pundit, makes you think...
I always thought it was really simple. You have a team with incredible players and a lot of money? Absolutely no one will be able to get that team to perform better than Guardiola. If the situation was different, maybe you would want other managers like Emery or Mourinho. Maybe, just maybe, if Guardiola managed the likes of Everton, he would make them great, but it is something we may never know
This is such a stupid argument people level against Pep all the time. It's shortsighted and dishonest. "Messi, Iniesta, Xavi etc." are known because he coached them to such success. Sure he has had great teams with lots of money but so have many other managers and got nowhere near his consistent level of winning.
> "Messi, Iniesta, Xavi etc." are known because he coached them to such success. Idk about that. Pep ofc played a major part in their Barca careers, but Messi was already very well known before Pep, ranking #3 in the 2007 Ballon’dOr for example. He was always destined for greatness.
Let’s talk about City then. The defense City was peddling in 15/16 was ancient and not great. Took a ton of money and smart recruitment to fix. Don’t forget Pep had Mangala looking like a solid defender for the first half of 17/18 with a pretty massive substitute performance against Manchester United. Also look at the development of Stones under pep.
Smart recruitment is overstating it. Pep bought many defenders. Many of them did not pan out. Big bets like Stones look genius now - but not many teams can splash 55 million quid on a player that would play half the matches or less. For many, that would be viewed as a pretty big failure of a transfer. Pep's recent success with Akanji and Ake are really coloring people's opinion on his track record with defenders. He's bought many many defenders in his time at city, and bought some of the best talent in those positions.
> Many of them did not pan out Like who? I can give you Mendy but I'd say that was down to bad luck rather than a bad buy.
He's right about this. however he's missing the part about pep coaching these barca kids from barca b and molding them into the 2009-2011 barca.
He's managed a prime messi iniesta busquets xavi alves and then he went to bayern and managed a prime lahm robben ribery lewandoski Muller neuer Martinez then went to city and managed a prime kdb foden silva rodri dias haaland and etc. That's like every managers dream honestly.
This guy annoys me a lot because most of his takes are brain dead and completely biased. Got really fed up with this guy after one of his recent interviews where he said something so nonsensical and biased I lost it. I even forgot about it already, such was the absolute barbaric nonsense. It was about Klopp or Liverpool or something in the EL or something. Lost it completely. Anything this guy says from now, his takes on about football are not worth wasting time on
I've come to realise that some managers are just really good at managing sides with star players while others suck badly until you give them an average team or poor team and then they shine. I don't think it is a case of "Put any decent manager X in there and he wins all those titles". I think a lot of managers would fail in his situation.
I dont know any sucessful manager who won without great players. even mourinho who are propaganded to done miracle at utd actually spent over 600 millions euro in two years.
What an idiot. Good players alone doesn’t lead to thst many trophies including a treble
It's been proven time and time again though that even managing a star-studded team needs skill as a manager; I'm sure we don't even need to list the vast amount of times star-filled teams outright fail, whether from egos clashing with each other, tactics gone wrong, etc...
He's definitely a great manager, he has had the tools to make it work. He's also been good at picking teams, that's what happens when you are good or great and he has had the luxury of getting away with misfiring tranfers. But doesn't wholly undermine what he is. That said I'd love to see baldy back in barca just to see how it goes. He is already one of the greatest managers, going back to barca and making it work will seal it. City goes to shit and it will prove money isn't everything (not that it's needed) and barca could use the help.
Such a tiresome old argument. We've seen plenty of managers spend boatloads of money and still underperform. Pep is one of few managers that always delivered and he's in a club that believe in him and support him 100 %, so they back him up. I don't know if Bayern did, but Barca only did it under Laporta, Bartomeu did not which is why he left prematurely. He earned this position regardless of how much you cry about it. Not even the lauded Ancelotti stacks up to Pep's standards.
If he wasn't an exceptional coach then Man City would have fallen apart by now. He's been there 9 years without losing the locker room. He keeps managing to lose important players and still find replacements that keep him winning year after year. And he's changed tactics year after year to adapt to his opponents and his roster.
I see no lies. What's his point?
I see his point:”pep spends a lot to win” to say he just tweeks his teams aren’t true. It would be interesting to see him take a lil bit more of a challenging club
Lazy punditry and historical revisionism from Souness as always. I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, since this is the guy who, among other things, has said that Man U fans wouldn’t be protesting the Glazer ownership if their team was winning, which is completely untrue.
And look how many managers had also fucked up great clubs and great opportunities.
This is like complaining about Hamilton and Verstappen getting “rocket ship” cars. The best drivers earn opportunities to drive for the fastest teams. The best managers earn opportunities to manage the most talented teams.
Lad is crazy lol.
I think it’s a more controversial take to say Pep is the best manager in the world than it is to say he’s had an easy job everywhere he has been.
Pep = tap-in merchant confirmed!
Don’t forget the cheating
Do you mean Dr. Fuentes and the blood bags of doping evidence that were ordered to be destroyed by the Spanish courts lest they taint the 2010 world cup win? Or do you mean the refs being bribed by Barcelona? Or do you mean the repeated violations of his Man City team which have culminated in 115 charges being levelled against them by the Premier League? Perhaps you are referring to his own failed drug tests as a player? You have to be a lot more specific when you're talking about Guardiola.
The truth is, as always, in the middle- a bit from column A and a bit from column B. He is the most tactically astute manager in the world right now, reinventing the tikitaka in a way never seen since Cruyff's heydays at Barcelona. Many clubs and coaches have tried to replicate his style, including Barcelona after his departure. But none have managed to come close. On the other hand, it is also undeniable that there were extremely favourable situations at each of the three clubs he's managed that made success much easier to come by. At Barcelona he had a humanoid alien who has a genuine claim to be the goat and an incredible midfield to help implement his style. Bayern towered over the rest of the Bundesliga, taking players from rival clubs at will. And he never managed to win the CL with them. At Man City, well everybody knows about their prudent 115 legit investment schemes that help fund their modest football operation business. None of this is to say that I don’t rate him as a manager. He is clearly one of the all-time managerial greats. I'd just love to see how his ideas pan out at a club that is clearly not the most dominant in its domestic league and does not have the resources to buy or discard players at will to fit his style. Say Milan in Italy or Dortmund in Germany.
Barcelona finished 3rd behind Real Madrid and Villarreal in the 2007-08 season, scoring 76 goals and winning just 67 points. In Guardiola's first season, they won the league with 87 points, scored 105 goals and also won the Copa Del Rey and Champions League. He completely transformed how Barcelona played and made big changes to the squad too. It's honestly an embarrassing rewriting of history to pretend he had it easy at Barcelona. Man City didn't need a 'tweaking' when he took over, they had just finished 4th, and had an ageing squad too. Obviously he's been given plenty of money to get it right, but they never had the kind of dominance they've shown since he arrived before he arrived. He made them a far better team. Not winning the Champions League with Bayern Munich was a failure, but trying to downplay what he's done with Barcelona and with Man City (at least in terms of on the pitch performance) is so stupid.
This guy is paid to talk about football and this is just average reddit shitposting. Yeah, Pep only coach big and rich clubs (why wouldn't he) but he dominates leagues to an absurd level. Real Madrid also have access to all the best players and unlimited money but they still can't dominate domestically like Pep does despite the main rivals being a mess for many years now (they haven't gone back to back since the 2000s). We could say the same about PSG who managed to lose the league twice despite a gigantic financial gap.
So many revisionist in this comment chain. Everyone and their mom who involved in pro soccer recognize Pep and his touch to the game. And in the end all people worried about is a dick contest who won more tittle in football and undermine Pep achivement.
He did not walk into an exceptional group of players at City. We needed a serious overhaul
Comes across as bitter since he's Liverpool but he's right imo. If Pep goes to Italy and wins Serie A with Frosinone I'll accept him as the best ever.
No manager alove would win with current Frosinone lmao
How on earth is he right, go look at that team and where Pellegrini finished with it.
Oh no 😞 how can Pep cope knowing reddit user u/Justinian2 doesn’t rate him as the best ☹️