Pep Guardiola has achieved the near impossible in his career…Twice, writes Mogamad Allie.
Whatever debate may have swirled around who the world’s best football manager may be, Josep ‘Pep’ Guardiola surely put the discussion to bed when his Manchester City team beat Inter Milan in the Champions League final on a steamy night in Istanbul in June to claim a
rare treble.
Not only did Guardiola register a hat-trick of Premier League titles, becoming only the second manager after Sir Alex Ferguson to achieve the feat, but his team was also crowned champions for a fifth time in six seasons.
When City beat cross-town rivals Manchester United in the FA Cup final, the 52-year-old Spaniard also joined Ferguson and Arsène Wenger, two of the game’s greatest managers ever, as the only individuals to win the English double more than once. Guardiola had previously delivered it in the 2018–19 season.
As any top manager would readily attest, winning a single league title in one of Europe’s top five leagues is tough, emerging victorious from the Champions League is perhaps even tougher and then adding the country’s top cup competition in the same season has to be testament to greatness.
What, then, about winning all three in the same campaign and then repeating the feat in Europe’s two best leagues?
That is exactly what Guardiola accom- plished with Manchester City last season, becoming the first manager in the game’s history to win the treble twice.
Having already achieved the holy grail of league title, domestic cup and European glory with Barcelona in 2009, Guardiola and his City players became only the 10th team to achieve the feat.
The former Spain international accepted one of the biggest jobs in world football in 2008 at the relatively early age of 37, when he was promoted from Barcelona’s B team to take charge of the famed senior team.
Even during his first season in charge of the Blaugrana, Guardiola showed he was not afraid to make big decisions when he told big names like Ronaldinho, Deco and Samuel Eto’o they were not part of his plans.
He backed up that bold action by delivering a historic treble as Barcelona won the Copa del Rey, LaLiga and the Champions League at the
end of his maiden season as a top-flight manager.
At the same time, Guardiola became the youngest manager in the history of Europe’s top club competition to do so.
The Catalan side also became the first and, to date, the only Spanish club to win the coveted treble. The feat was later repeated under Luis Enrique in the 2014/15 season.
Such is the level of intensity and commitment the former midfielder brings to his job that he wisely took a one-year sabbatical from the game after four highly successful seasons with Barcelona that saw him delivering 14 trophies, including two Champions League titles and three successive LaLiga crowns.
With his batteries fully recharged, the Spaniard easily picked up where he left off by winning the Bundesliga in each of his three seasons at Bayern Munich.
Since arriving at the Etihad in 2016, Guardiola has continued his success, transforming City into an intimidating domestic powerhouse by winning 12 trophies in dominant fashion.
THE SECRET TO SUCCESS?
Guardiola’s teams have always played a characteristic possession-based game with swift, accurate passing, a high press, and players who are multi-dimensional and can seamlessly switch between roles in the course of the game.
In last season’s team, for example, John Stones, Kyle Walker, Aymeric Laporte, Manuel Akanji, Nathan Aké and young Rico Lewis, all primarily defenders, showed they were fully capable of inverting into the midfield and adapting from game to game depending on Guardiola’s specific plan for the opposition.
A hard taskmaster, the City manager is hardly ever completely satisfied with his team’s performances, whether after a comfortable victory or a devastating defeat – something that does not happen too frequently.
After virtually every game, Guardiola can be seen involved in animated discussions with some of his players, letting them know in no uncertain terms where they need to improve and what they could have done differently.
His quest for perfection is relentless and unending. In seeking to remain ahead of his competitors, Guardiola has constantly adapted his team’s style of play and tactics, though the foundation of dominating possession remains constant.
In 2018/19 it was the relentless front three of Raheem Sterling, Leroy Sané and Sergio Agüero that powered City to the title. In 2021/22, following the departure of Agüero, the club’s all-time leading goal scorer, Guardiola used Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gündogan, Kevin de Bruyne and Phil Foden as false nines at various times.
PROBLEM SOLVING
Last season saw the employment of the inverted full-back as a new option to solving the issue of playing a large part of the campaign without a recognised left-back.
“Sometimes the way the team evolves depends on the opponents and the problems they create for you,” Guardiola said before his team’s penultimate league game against Brighton at the end of May.
“You cannot play all the time, six, seven seasons in the same way, for two reasons. First, you have different players and when you play with a false nine or when Erling Haaland is out, to defend and attack is completely different.
And second, the opponents do not defend the same way because they know you, they discover secrets of the quality of players you have.
“I would like to stay with one system with the same players for seven years and the opponent doesn’t realise it, and we are always in perfect shape and perfect condition but it doesn’t happen that way.”
According to renowned Spanish football journalist Guillem Balagué, also Guardiola’s biographer, the City manager spends most of his waking hours planning ways to be one step ahead of his opponents.
“His sleeping pattern is unconven- tional, with messages sent to his coaching staff at early hours in the morning. He often relies on long siestas during the day to recharge his batteries,” Balagué wrote on the BBC’s website in June.
“He has an ability to get the very last drop out of his team and a ruthless, dispassionate willingness to discard the players unable to give him total commitment. Those qualities, matched by the standard of his players, put him light years ahead of the rest.
“Guardiola is like the schoolteacher that you only appreciated in later years, but hated at the time because he demanded so much more of you.”
OTHER CURRENT GREATS
While Guardiola is clearly top of the tree, others like Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti, Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp and José Mourinho, who is currently with Roma, can all lay claim to being worthy adversaries.
The amiable Ancelotti became the first manager to win the respective championship in Europe’s top five leagues when he guided Real Madrid to the LaLiga title in 2022. When his Real Madrid side beat Liverpool in the 2022 final, Ancelotti became the first manager to win the Champions League four times.
Mourinho, the self-proclaimed “Special One”, won the treble with Inter Milan in 2010 which included his second Champions League title after his initial success with Porto in 2004.
He has also won league titles in his native Portugal, England (three times) and Spain.
Klopp has league titles in Germany and England to his credit as well as a Champions League victory with Liverpool and has been credited
by Guardiola as being his toughest opponent.
