This isnt knocking Pep, but the reason Pique wasn't a starter at Man Utd was because Vidic and Rio were strongest CB duo in the world under Fergie.
Is Pep the greatest manager of all time?
- Thread starter Irrational.
- Start date
He's clearly a superb coach of elite players - the level Man City have reached under him that his predecessors were incapable of is testament to that.
However, by achieving this with City and all the controversy around how they reached the summit, as well as having a Barca side already containing several all-time greats and taking over a Bayern side that had just won the CL as part of a treble, well it could be argued he was only meeting expectations.
Even Mourinho bringing Porto to winning the CL is a much greater achievement than anything Pep has achieved given their resources.
However, by achieving this with City and all the controversy around how they reached the summit, as well as having a Barca side already containing several all-time greats and taking over a Bayern side that had just won the CL as part of a treble, well it could be argued he was only meeting expectations.
Even Mourinho bringing Porto to winning the CL is a much greater achievement than anything Pep has achieved given their resources.
A big part of this greatest midfield trio of all time is Busquets who Pep (mimicking Cruyff and his beginnings at Barcelona) fast tracked from the youth team to the first squad.
Not to even mention that Xavi and Iniesta (despite Euro 2008 success) had never displayed the levels of dominance they did post 2008, prior to Pep's arrival.
Xavi was on his way out!
Not to even mention that Xavi and Iniesta (despite Euro 2008 success) had never displayed the levels of dominance they did post 2008, prior to Pep's arrival.
Xavi was on his way out!
How does this translate to "being handed the greatest midfield trio"?
Twenty years after he's gone, people won't look into every miniscule detail of his management skills, instead almost solely relying on his trophy count to gauge his greatness. When that happens, he may truly be at the top (numerically in all senses) by the time he hangs his boots.
Two things can be true:
1. Pep was extremely fortunate to inherit the GOAT plus two of the greatest central midfielders of all time (as well as several other very good players of course).
2. Pep took full advantage of this fortune and created a borderline unstoppable team.
Plenty of managers could have done great things with that team, but very few managers could have done it in such a convincing manner.
Pep is obviously one of the greatest managers of all time. But Fergie was better.
1. Pep was extremely fortunate to inherit the GOAT plus two of the greatest central midfielders of all time (as well as several other very good players of course).
2. Pep took full advantage of this fortune and created a borderline unstoppable team.
Plenty of managers could have done great things with that team, but very few managers could have done it in such a convincing manner.
Pep is obviously one of the greatest managers of all time. But Fergie was better.
Everyone would have dropped prime Yaya Toure for an unknown from the academy?
Of course. Wouldn't everyone have shipped off Ince and Kanchelsis to promote academy players to the first team?
Check your sarcasm meter
Fair enough, that one got by me.
Though, in my defence, it's pretty hard to distinguish in this thread.
Trophy count can only be used to gauge his trophy count. Not sure what more you can infer from it. Especially something as subjective as greatness.
The moment you start saying that the sheer number of trophies somehow means that he is a better than manager x,y,z, we're back to exactly this discussion about overachieving relative to resources, expectation etc.
I mean, going by trophy count alone, managers like Sir Matt and Bill Shankly are way down the pecking order. But they are among the greatest ever managers of mammoth clubs.
Xavi had just become "best player" in Euro 2008, and you're praising Pep for recognizing his talent?
The resources at your disposal are absolutely vital in assessment - if you have an excellent, world beating squad, and you're of the calibre to be talked about in all-time regard, assessment parameters adjust by default.
There's relief that there was no double-treble, because it propels to another stratosphere, one you can't really argue against, even for an artificial team and a manager who has no idea of what the proverbial trenches are. That would be the trust fund baby taking performance to levels unheard of - even if he did start at the top, that'd be really pushing out the envelope to probably what is close to max of what state resources can provide a club within the real world.
There's relief that there was no double-treble, because it propels to another stratosphere, one you can't really argue against, even for an artificial team and a manager who has no idea of what the proverbial trenches are. That would be the trust fund baby taking performance to levels unheard of - even if he did start at the top, that'd be really pushing out the envelope to probably what is close to max of what state resources can provide a club within the real world.
He had not become the best player in the world at Euro 2008, that was Cristiano fecking Ronaldo. Marcos Senna had an excellent tournament as well and went on to...
I'm not praising Pep for recognizing his talent (that's bottom on the totem pole) but I'm acknowledging written record that his own fecking club was content with letting him leave the club and it was Guardiola who said "wait. We need you". That's not being handed the best midfield in the world on the plate. If he had simply proceeded with Deco/Edmilson/Yaya, then you'd have a point.
He said best player of the Euro 2008 tournament, he never even said best player in the world.
Corruption follows him around like a bad smell.
Not sure there is that much debate here. Pep is easily the best manager of his generation. Ferguson is the best of his time period. In the end it's mostly about trophies and the type of trophy. Pep is already pretty even with Ferguson on that and he has many years left. To say Pep isnt worthy of being in the same breath as Ferguson doesn't really work. Whatever low opinion I might have of Man City is irrelevant...He will surpass Ferguson's list of achievements in the end.
Both Man Utd and Pep's teams had a high amount of resources so there isn't a whole lot in that either.
Both Man Utd and Pep's teams had a high amount of resources so there isn't a whole lot in that either.
I read it differently, as in "come end of Euro 2008, he was the best player"
It still doesn't matter. Who was the best player of Euro 2004? Zagorakis or some other Greek player. And what occurred of him?
Fergie had to work with the Glazers debt. Perhaps Fergie meant what he said about no value in the market but i don't really believe it. Like replacing Ronaldo(was still sort considered the best player in world) and Teves(a world class striker) with Valencia, Owen and fecking around with players like obertan and not buying a god damn midfielder when Scholes retired and went with Cleverly then and then called Scholes out retirement.
Missing out on Hazard because of agent fee's. Even in the 90's we missed out players like R9, Batistuta because we weren't willing to change our wage budget and then in 2003 we missed out on Ronaldinho because Gill fecked around. Im sure Fergie loved a bargain, but im also he would be delighted enough to land those players since we could actually afford them. Our board just wasnt as ambitious as the big italian clubs and Barca and Real Madrid and later City and Chelsea.
I totally believe that if Man Utd had given Fergie the transfer and wage budget befitting a club with the worlds highest revenue, Fergie would have dominated Europe to a much higher degree.
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it all depends on how many (and in what words) people are going to talk about him 20, 30 years from now.
They won't care that he always worked at clubs that had the biggest resources in their leagues,
and if the 115 counts + the Barca refereeing stuff won't amount to anything major, people won't remember that either in a couple of years.
He might very well be the best coach of all time. at their absolute peak, his Barca team was more frightening than any team I can think of [but of course, I'm not 100 years old and haven't watched great teams of the 80s or prior to that]. I also think that his best version of City played on a higher level than Fergie's best United teams.
This of course won't go down well in a United forum...
I don't like the brand of football but at its best it's absolutely brutal.
Best manager of all time? no chance in hell. He can't and won't even try to do what Fergie or even Klopp did, in the sense that they built teams from scratch and won major titles with many "above-average-but-not-much-more" type of players playing key roles throughout a season (not saying Klopp is anywhere near Fergie when it comes to the all-time debate but the structure of their respective successes has things in common).
Fergie and probably other great managers of the past had responsibilities that Pep shares with probably 2-3 people.
He has it much easier.
not to mention that he coaches in an era when the science behind football is at its peak.
Soon enough there won't be many managers left, just coaches.
the "all-time" debates would probably need to be split in two for comparisons to be fair, but they obviously won't.
They won't care that he always worked at clubs that had the biggest resources in their leagues,
and if the 115 counts + the Barca refereeing stuff won't amount to anything major, people won't remember that either in a couple of years.
He might very well be the best coach of all time. at their absolute peak, his Barca team was more frightening than any team I can think of [but of course, I'm not 100 years old and haven't watched great teams of the 80s or prior to that]. I also think that his best version of City played on a higher level than Fergie's best United teams.
This of course won't go down well in a United forum...
I don't like the brand of football but at its best it's absolutely brutal.
Best manager of all time? no chance in hell. He can't and won't even try to do what Fergie or even Klopp did, in the sense that they built teams from scratch and won major titles with many "above-average-but-not-much-more" type of players playing key roles throughout a season (not saying Klopp is anywhere near Fergie when it comes to the all-time debate but the structure of their respective successes has things in common).
Fergie and probably other great managers of the past had responsibilities that Pep shares with probably 2-3 people.
He has it much easier.
not to mention that he coaches in an era when the science behind football is at its peak.
Soon enough there won't be many managers left, just coaches.
the "all-time" debates would probably need to be split in two for comparisons to be fair, but they obviously won't.
Old Pavel Nedved and young Cristiano Ronaldo were better than any greek player in that tournament.
To a degree I think you are right. I would make the same defense of Wenger and that his resources were far more limited than Fergie's especially when they announced the new stadium. In the end though, as you United fans often remind us Arsenal supporters, we will count trophies and Pep will be the undisputed king there when he retires.
Agree again for the most part....however you only play the cards you are given. In any scenario you can look at how that person got there but most of all you look at what that person achieved, The background story is fun, and is good filler but results matter the most.
Wenger did well considering the circumstances. We used to laugh at Arsenal celebrating getting top 4 and winning tons of FA cups while having to balance the books and getting your players poached.
Post Fergie we have the highest netspend than any club in the world while we struggle to make top 4 consistently and have won 1 Fa cup in that decade.
It would be interesting to see if people posted their Top 10 to see if the criteria being applied to Pep can be applied in a consistent and coherent manner across the rankings. His "lows" are being hyper scrutinized and compared to the highlights and best achievements of other managerial careers. At the end of the day most of this stuff probably just boils down to feels.
Sacchi was a tactical revolutionary, but did not really win all that many major trophies or have great longevity/replicability and he "inherited" a tremendous squad a lot of which was bankrolled by OG sugar daddy Berlusconi's exorbitant spending. He is still held in very high regard, frequently featuring (rightly IMO) in Top 5/10 lists and I rarely see the specter of Berlusconi held against him or even mentioned.
Sacchi was a tactical revolutionary, but did not really win all that many major trophies or have great longevity/replicability and he "inherited" a tremendous squad a lot of which was bankrolled by OG sugar daddy Berlusconi's exorbitant spending. He is still held in very high regard, frequently featuring (rightly IMO) in Top 5/10 lists and I rarely see the specter of Berlusconi held against him or even mentioned.
It doesn't matter? Spain was the best team by a margin, with the midfield led by Xavi as their centerpeace and a record of 22 unbeaten matches. And now you compare them to Greece 2004? "Best player" awards sometimes are pointless, but in Xavis case, they surely were not.
This would actually be an excellent exercise.
1. Select several vectors:
- Success as an underdog
- Overall trophies won
- Tactical acumen
- Tactical revolutionary (were their tactics transformative)
- Man management
- Player development (youth and adult)
- Club legacy (relevance within a club's history)
- Managerial/DOF skills (did they take more responsibilities beyond coaching, and how well did they do this?)
2. Assign relative weights to selected vectors. How important is one vector related to another? Maybe overall trophies is a 10, and success as an underdog is a 8, and tactical acumen is a 5? Whatever.
3. Rate a manager in each vector.
4. Find the weighted sum of a manager's score
5. Rank the managers based on this weighted score.
Pavel Nedvěd
Wiki begs to differ
- Adversity (conditions whilst at a club)
- Jeopardy (consequence for bad purchases)
- Reinvention (some are unable to reinvent once 'found out' others are never found out due to their capacity to adapt)
The weighting is a sticking point because the underdog aspect or the upcoming great arc is World Cup equivalent level of points for some and is barely even registered by others. Xabi Alonso right now, for example is really doing something special and if he goes on to be the next great one, his current feat(s) may never be surpassed for some.
In the end he will be lauded because of his trophy cabinet. But when you look closer into the successes.
He was caught using steroids as a player.
There was the Spanish cycling scandal with steroid and question marks over the Spanish football team at the same time. This was around the same time as he managed Barcelona. Luckily for them all the blood samples were randomly destroyed before a case could be made.
Referee scandal at Barcelona whilst he was manager.
At Bayern the long term doctor of the club resigned over Pep’s unrealistic targets for players returning to match fitness. He was sending players back to Spain for treatment and they suddenly recovered faster.
And now at City they have breached 115 FFP rules and cheated their way to success.
There is a constant trend of him cheating to get an edge over the opposition.
He was caught using steroids as a player.
There was the Spanish cycling scandal with steroid and question marks over the Spanish football team at the same time. This was around the same time as he managed Barcelona. Luckily for them all the blood samples were randomly destroyed before a case could be made.
Referee scandal at Barcelona whilst he was manager.
At Bayern the long term doctor of the club resigned over Pep’s unrealistic targets for players returning to match fitness. He was sending players back to Spain for treatment and they suddenly recovered faster.
And now at City they have breached 115 FFP rules and cheated their way to success.
There is a constant trend of him cheating to get an edge over the opposition.
What about Jorginho with Italy at the last Euros ? He was named the best player and Italy came into the tournament with a record of games where they were unbeaten too.
No one claimed he was one of the best midfielders ever after that.
Zagorakis won the player of Euro 2004 iirc
How is Greece 2004 different?
Zagorakis was also voted the Player of the Tournament.
https://edition.cnn.com/2004/SPORT/football/07/05/euro.team/index.html
https://www.uefa.com/euro2024/news/...a56f0-1000--euro-2004-team-of-the-tournament/
This is bs though… we saw the tourney, we remember Nedved and CR7… Greece had a very solid defensive unit that worked well collectively. None of their players stood out.
Wiki begs to differ
Sure sure. Officially. But I remember that tournament and I think most that watched remember Nedvěd as the real star. Young CR7 is also a good shout. Of course, they gave it to someone from Greece because they won but Greece was really more about team defense than any standout player.
Tournament awards often go to the best performing or most important player on the winning side, though not always, and not necessarily the actual best player in the tournament. Anyone that watched Euro 2004 knows Ronaldo stood out above any Greek player. And if Portugal had won it would have been Ronaldo, Figo, or Maniche taking the top player award.
Same argument can be made about Xavi in 2008. I don't recall him being better than others in the tournament. As with Spain in their glory years, no single player stood out, it was more of a collective effort. Maybe Marcus Senna was more influential. I thought Ballack was more influential than Xavi in the tournament
But if you are arguing that Pep got the best player of Euro 2008 in Xavi because he got an award then you should respect the same award given to Zagorakis too 4yrs earlier by the same body
How would of Pep set up set up the England golden generation 1? The Scholes/Gerrard/ Lampard team?
It doesn't really work that way. The quality is on display is there for all too see. How good the best player of a tournament differs from each edition like the Ballon d'Or. When Michael Owen won he was nowhere near as good as when Cristiano and Messi won it their first time let alone all the other times. Same applies to R9, Ronaldinho and Zidane. Owen wasn't close despite being world class striker when he won it.