2023-06-11 14:11:57
Winner of his third Champions League, Pep Guardiola has joined a closed circle, but he remains ahead, like his peers, by Carlo Ancelotti and his four successes in C1.
“Attention, Real Madrid, we are thirteen Champions Leagues behind you but we are coming to get you”, laughed Pep Guardiola, in a playful and facetious mood on Saturday, following his team’s triumph in the Champions League final . Pep Guardiola was only half joking. Because if Real Madrid seems out of reach (14 titles in the Champions League), its coach, Carlo Ancelotti, is not. It is even within reach of the Catalan technician on the winners of the prestigious European competition. Manchester City gave Pep Guardiola his third cup with big ears as a coach, a specificity that the Catalan technician now shares with Bob Paisley (1977, 1978, 1981) and Zinedine Zidane (2016, 2017, 2018).
Long considered one of the best, even before having lifted his third C1, Guardiola was already among the coaches who marked the history of the Champions League. On Saturday, he definitively silenced the skeptics and chased the shadow of Lionel Messi to whom his detractors attributed the major role in the titles won by the former Barça coach with the Catalan club (2008-2012). Far from Messi, the esthete Guardiola has built fantastic teams, marked the history of the game and piled up titles (4 German championships, 5 English championships, etc.). This third Champions League (2009, 2011, 2023), his first since 2011, is the ultimate consecration of an extraordinary career.
But although he may occupy a place of choice in the pantheon of the greatest coaches in history, Pep Guardiola remains ahead of the Champions League list by Carlo Ancelotti, who last season became the first coach to win the Champions League for the fourth time.
Winner as a player and coach, like Carlo Ancelotti and Johan Cruyff or even Zinedine Zidane, Pep Guardiola became this weekend the sixth coach to win the trophy with several teams, a performance achieved by José Mourinho (Porto, Inter ), Jupp Heynckes (Real, Bayern), Ottmar Hitzfeld (Dortmund Bayern), Ernst Happel (Feyenoord, Hamburg) and Carlo Ancelotti (AC Milan, Real), once more him. “The rest? I don’t have the slightest energy to think regarding next season, it’s impossible, confided Guardiola as night fell on the Atatürk stadium in Istanbul. We need to cut, it’s been too much long, but now our internationals will go to the selections. It’s too much.”
Top Articles
1686495577
#circle #greatest #Guardiola #closer #Ancelotti
