The team was young and still starting out that whole starting 11 was fantastic. Best midfield partnership of maybe all time one of the top 2 players of all time the all time leading Spain goal scorer in villa the season before that one do the greatest players of his generation in Henry. That team was still molding together. Did pep have a part ? Ya sure like I said he is a great coach but that team was too good not to succeed. Similar example the golden state warriors and Steve Kerr that team can coach themselves they are that good. Every other coach who coached Barca had success as well right after because the team was that good Messi best year was in 2013 where he scored 91 goals in a calendar year pep was not their...
The year was 2012. In matter of goals, Messi's best season was 2011-2012 and Guardiola was the coach. He was not the coach only in the second half of the year 2012.
Also there is a user here who wrote that he could win everything with the Barcelona squad of 2008-2009. Do I need to explain how wrong is that? Besides, it was not only that they won, it was the fantastic football that they played. That team comes only once in a lifetime, a huge series of factors combined to make that Barcelona as fantastic as they were, without even one of these factors, they would not have reached those crazy levels of football. Guardiola was one of the factors, anyone who bothers looking deeply about that team development will know that. Dismissing Guardiola as overrated for having a huge amount of fantastic players at his disposal is not valid at all when he had a crucial in building possibly the greatest team ever. If I was going to use the same arguments that are used to dismiss Guardiola here, then Rinus Michels was massively overrated too. I consider Rinus Michels the greatest coach ever, and I am not pretending that Guardiola did any tactical revolution close to what Michels did, but many of the criticisms made against Guardiola fit perfectly against Rinus Michels too if we are coherent, and I will explain below why.
Rinus Michels coached nothing less than one of the greatest generations of footballers in history of football and had perhaps the best European player ever at his disposal in Johan Cruyff. While Rinus Michels nurtured that generation and helped them achieve their maximum potential, winning Ajax their first European title, Stefan Kovacs coached Ajax right in the next seasons and won more two European titles. Meanwhile, Rinus Michels was at Barcelona and was not able to win anything at all in his first two seasons at the club. Only when Cruyff quit Ajax and came to Barcelona in the 73-74 season, he would be able to win La Liga. Rinus Michele made a fantastic work with the Holland national team during the World Cup. Before he coached them, Holland was struggling to play good/great football. But I guess it does not matter, since that Holland was perhaps the second best team in history of World Cup and the greatest generation of Holland'S history...
After that, Rinus Michels' only notable achievement was winning the Euro 1988 for Holland, with another fantastic generation with Van Basten, Gullit, Rijkaard Koeman...
Also, if Guardiola is overrated, then Arrigo Sacchi is even more overrated too. Arrigo Sacchi in many ways perfected the system of Holland 1974 and revolutionized football at the time. His Milan played wonderful attacking football that wowed everyone at the time. His Milan is still considered one of the greatest teams ever. Yet, he had at his disposal the best squad of the world, with players like Van Basten, Gullit, Rijkaard, Baresi, Maldini and Donadoni. He was only able to win Serie A once. And he did nothing more noteworthy after he left Milan, only collecting bad and often truly embarrassing works after Milan. If anything, Guardiola post-Barcelona is already miles above Sacchi post-Milan. Yet, Sacchi is still considered one of the best coaches of all time.
Can you all see my point?
