Is Pep Guardiola Really The Great Manager As Portrayed By The Media?

Is Pep Guardiola Really The Great Manager As Portrayed By The Media? - originally posted on Sportslens.com

1st February 2016 – Manchester City announced that Pep Guardiola will be taking over from Manuel Pellegrini as manager as of next season. City fans rejoiced, all pundits and neutrals were looking forward to seeing Guardiola in the premier league next season and City are already favourites to win the treble next year.

Pep Guardiola is a very good manager, winning 14 trophies with Barcelona and 7 trophies with Bayern Munich, but I personally believe he has had an easy managerial career and has had enough resources behind him to make his job easy.

Guardiola took over from Frank Rijkaard at Barcelona at the beginning of the 2008-2009 season and took some big steps in selling Ronaldinho, Deco and Gianluca Zambrotta, who were key in Barcelona’s team. He signed Dani Alves, Seydou Keita, Gerald Pique, Martin Caceres and Alexander Hleb who are pretty average (apart from Alves and Pique). He still had the likes of Lionel Messi, Carles Puyol, Xavi and Andres Iniesta in the side. They went on to win the treble with what in my opinion was still Frank Rijkaard’s Barcelona team, all he had to say to his team is carry on as normal. I also believe the inconsistency of Barcelona’s greatest rivals Real Madrid, replacing their manager Bernd Schuster with Juande Ramos allowed Barcelona to gain a march ahead in their domestic league.

He would then go on to win trophies in the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 season, proclaiming him one of the best coaches in the world, again I put it that he was successful due to the team he had inherited and the inconsistencies of all the teams around him, again their closest rivals Real Madrid were chopping and changing their manager once again with Manuel Pellegrini coming in and eventually being replaced by Jose Mourinho. He signed the likes of Adriano from Sevilla, Javier Mascherano from Liverpool and David Villa from Valencia, each player is ok but hardly up to Barcelona standards leaving it to the old guard to run the show and win it for Guardiola.

In the 2011-2012 season, things started to catch up with Guardiola and Barcelona, they conceded the title to Real Madrid, were knocked out of the champions league by Chelsea and lost some of their key players in Gabriel Milito and Bojan leaving. Cesc Fabregas was signed from Arsenal and despite being the talented player he is seemed to struggle to adapt to Barcelona’s style of football. Guardiola finished third in FIFA’s world coach of the year losing to Jose Mourinho in second place and Vicente Del Bosque ended up in the first place.

He would go on to take a sabbatical for a year, before taking over as Bayern Munich manager from Jupp Heynckes. Heynckes had just had one of the most successful seasons in Bayern’s history in winning the treble, leaving Guardiola to inherit a treble winning side. Again I believe this had caused Guardiola to tell his players just carry on as you were when facing opponents, and this has helped with them winning the Bundesliga in his first two seasons. He has tried to change the Bayern formation and change to his style of possession football and I believe this is the cause of their failure in Europe.

As of the 2016-2017 season, Guardiola started his management of Manchester City with 10 straight wins, recently Guardiola’s tactics have been called into question with the players struggling to come to term with what he wants from them and he has yet to find his best team. City’s current situation could see as Guardiola’s hardest challenge as a manager. I disagree, with City’s financial clout, Guardiola can bid on whatever player he wants for however much money he wants, allowing him to create his own fantasy team and set City on course for domestic and European honours.

If Guardiola can win the league next season with City on a limited budget, I will admit he has succeeded as a manager for the first time in his career. His managerial career at Barcelona and Bayern were made all too easy with the players available to him.

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