Пеп Гвардиолагийн Английн хөлбөмбөгт үлдээсэн асар их өв ба түүний нөлөө

The Premier League is without Pep Guardiola in its opening weekend for the first time in a decade.

Across his 10 seasons the 55-year-old won six Premier League titles, three FA Cups, five League Cups and a Champions League with Manchester City, leaving the Etihad in May after 593 matches in charge.

“To come to the country which created football and believe you have to change something would be a little bit presumptuous,” said Guardiola upon his arrival in English football in 2016.

“I’m not good enough to change everything. I trust a lot in myself. I am able to do the job but I don’t come here to think I can change the mentality or the culture of England.”

But that is exactly what he did: his vision of football has spawned disciples, including his successor Enzo Maresca and the man who beat him to the tile last season, Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta.

His influence was not restricted to the elite, though, ithas also filtered down to grassroots level, changing the fundamentals of coaching at all levels. There is English football before Guardiola and there is English football after Guardiola. That is how profound his legacy is.

As the new season gets under way,The Athletic spoke to some of the managershe faced along the way. They had some surprising stories to tell, about his warmth, his advice and about his deep affection for the lower leagues of English football.

Neil Warnock

People tell me it is an unlikely friendship but I really enjoyed his company and I think he enjoyed mine.

It started off after a game with Cardiff City. During it there were one or two tackles flying in and he had a go at me on the touchline. We did really well for 30 minutes and I’m thinking, ‘Bloody hell, we’re doing well here, we might have a chance’. We were 3-0 down at half time.

After it we had a chat and a good laugh. Management is a lonely job, so we got together a few times over the years. I did a show in Manchester and his assistant came to it at the theatre last year. He loved the anecdotes and loved lower-league English football. I even took him to a Stockport County game once.

In his career he is used to coming up against the elite. I’m not saying I’m not elite… but he enjoyed my humour. He’s had me up to watch training a few times and I’m told not many get to see that much.

One time he asked me to speak to the squad before training. I gathered them around and said, ‘You can thank your lucky stars I’m not your manager as you’d be kicking the ball up there and chasing it, heading and tackling’.

It was an intense training session but afterwards he took me for a coffee. He said: ‘Do you know this morning, I realised why you won eight promotions. We have data, computers, statisticians, nutritionists, analysts, staff for everything. Do you know what we haven’t got? Humour.’

It’s OK saying he’s had the best players but they’re not easy to manage or to get playing the way he does. It is the human element that Pep has, which is why he is the best manager I’ve ever come across.

He related to me shouting, ‘You’ve got to die for three points.’ I showed him the video of the two of us comparing our team talks but he had already seen it and he loved it. He thought it was really funny.

In fact, that just reminded me. He sent me a voice message recently but I got a new phone and deleted it by accident…

Rob Edwards

It was a privilege to go up against him four times. The first time with Luton Town, we were 1-0 up at half-time. Some of the staff said they heard him going mental for the full 15 minutes at half-time. He was angry at one point with some decisions and he said to the fourth official, ‘It’s alright, we won six titles with you doing this to us.’ It was like Jurgen Klopp was on the sideline. They use their influence.

They beat us 2-1 in the end and he said to me: ‘Lots of stupid fouls you made.’ He felt we were being aggressive, but we weren’t rolling the red carpet out for them.

The second was a wacky game. It finished 6-2 to them but should have been 8-4. We went man-for-man everywhere and planned to leave Ruben Dias on the ball but he played Manuel Akanji instead and had John Stones running through us. He had his players taking us to weird positions to beat the man-to-man. I remember having a bit of banter with him on the sideline when (goalkeeper Stefan) Ortega played this through-ball like a No 10.

We kept it 0-0 for an hour in the third one but lost 5-1. We had a glass of wine at his place for 45 minutes and had a really good chat about lots of things.

He was really complimentary about what we’d done with the team at Luton and how brave we were. I remember him saying that he showed his team how we pressed the goalkeeper at Anfield, ‘These guys have balls — even I wouldn’t do that!’

Pep Guardiola was complimentary about Rob Edwards’ Luton team (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

He was kind of like what you see from the outside. Really animated. He was talking about how much coaching takes out of him and I said I didn’t know how he does it every three days while having to win everything. But he couldn’t get his head around how 38 games could physically break our Luton players. I had to explain that half of them were (playing in) League Two a couple of years before!

The last game against him was with Wolves in January. My family was in the tunnel area behind the glass. They know I love him as around the time he came to England I was reading all of the books on him and watching his Bayern Munich team a lot. So when we were chatting they were recording it and he kissed my hand as a goodbye. My daughter was laughing her head off but it was a special moment.

Gareth Ainsworth

We drew them away from home in the Carabao Cup when I was at Wycombe. We travelled up on a Tuesday and knew we’d be up against it but we scored after 22 minutes. I turned around and took a picture of the scoreboard at that point. At least I had that no matter how it went. I think we just annoyed him. We got beat 6-1.

After the game he was really good at making sure all the boys got a shirt from his players. He understood this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a lot of them.

We’d been discussing on the bus whether he would invite us in for a drink or not, but he did. The passion he had on the touchline is what he brought into the office. There was no relaxation. He just loved the game.

He was good at saying, ‘I have the best players and I am very thankful for that’, but I also remember him going on about how he had never seen anyone like (Adebayo) Akinfenwa before.

I’d prepared for a potential meeting. The night before I went out in Manchester and got myself what I thought was a decent bottle of red wine. Anything above 20 quid is good for a lad from Blackburn. Four of our staff piled into his office and I handed him it. He looked at it, put it to the side and opened another bottle of his. Then he opened another. Still hadn’t touched mine.

We shook hands at the end and gave me a bottle of wine back but it still wasn’t mine! I enjoyed a glass of it with my dad when he next came down for a Wycombe game.

They say don’t meet your heroes, but he didn’t disappoint. I met Slash from Guns N’ Roses and he sits next to Pep for me.

Chris Hughton

Brighton & Hove Albion were the third team I had managed in the Premier League after Newcastle United and Norwich City. In 2017 we were promoted from the Championship for the first time in the club’s history. We drew City on the first day. Talk about welcome to the Premier League.

We lost 2-0 but made it difficult for them as they scored two late on and we had a few chances at the other end. I knew we had done well but that was the one thing he never said to me. I appreciated that as I think he knew it would sound patronising. When you lose you are not in the mood to hear that.

When you speak to him you are engulfed by the sense that this is a special person. There are zero distractions in your mind when he is talking to you about football.

I’m on the board at the League Managers Association and whenever he has been asked to do anything he has always been very generous with his limited time for a man as accomplished as he is.

Chris Hughton sees Pep Guardiola’s influence percolating all the way down to League Two (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

He massively changed our game. There are only two managers you can say that about. Arsene Wenger and his professionalism, but with regards to tactics he’s had the biggest effect. I am looking at League One and League Two teams seeing them do things that he introduced: inverted full backs, centre-backs pushing into midfield, false nine, how much he used the goalkeeper to play out.

The coaches coming through now are not playing what would have been seen as our way. They are playing his way and that is now seen as the natural thing to do at grassroots level.

Karl Robinson

I was lucky enough to manage against him at Oxford United and Salford City — and I was on the staff at Leeds United too. Whether it was League One, League Two or the Premier League, he was just as intense and passionate for all three.

At Oxford in 2019 we played them at home in the Carabao Cup and had 18 shots, the most a Pep team had ever faced in one game back then. One of my substitutes took a first-time shot from 30 yards, and when I was speaking to Pep afterwards he started talking about him by name. He knew all my players’ names even though we were League Two.

He said, ‘I told my players the entire week to watch for that first-time shot’. He had watched all the clips. That was the attention to detail he went into for Salford.

He left shirts for our players. I have been very lucky to coach against top managers and not everyone is like that.

In February I took Salford to the Etihad. We were 2-0 down and he brought on Marc Guehi, Antoine Semenyo and Rodri. I just looked at him and said ‘What the f*** are you doing?’. He just laughed. He has zero disrespect for anyone but he wants to obliterate you. You want that authenticity as an opposition manager.

Me and Giggsy (Ryan Giggs) went into his office. The respect he had for the old Manchester United players was incredible. He holds people like that in such high regard. He’s like a boxer after the final bell.

The way he conducted himself around the building, no title meant anything. It was about the person. He was speaking to all the staff. My daughter came into the office after and he was amazing with her. I will never forget. It’s sad that he is not in the greatest league anymore.

Lee Johnson

After I got sacked from Fleetwood Town in 2023, I was basically cancelled in a football sense. Coaches I’d looked after with favours by giving them loan players were not picking up. Agents I’d done millions in deals with were red-buttoning my calls.

I was asked to do Radio Manchester at the Bournemouth vs City game. That night I had to stay longer so I sat in the back of the press conference with about 60 people in the room.

It had been around three years since I had faced him with Bristol City but Pep spotted me and jumped three rows back to talk to me. We spoke for maybe 10 minutes and he was very inspiring. I remember a reporter sniggering. It was one fallen soldier and one guy at the top of his game.

Pep Guardiola was there for Lee Johnson when others in football turned their backs (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

But he gave me time when no one else did. He just struck me as pure class and he was sincere in all his words. It gave me a nice boost and shortly after I was invited into City to coach the loans group in pre-season. Now I am managing Lommel in Belgium, part of the City Football Group.

John Askey

When we drew them at Port Vale in 2020 they were flying, beating Premier League teams by six and seven. Everyone was euphoric and I was sh***ing myself.

One of my mates is pals with Sir Alex Ferguson. He rang me and said, ‘Just get a goal and everyone will be happy’. We managed to equalise and make it 1-1 but Pep played a full-strength team and they won 4-1. It showed the respect he had for the FA Cup by picking such strong sides.

He invited our entire team in to get their shirts signed. They had a good laugh because there was a bit of a story between John Stones and our talisman Tom Pope. In the summer he had played for England at Euro 2020 and Popey had tweeted that if he played against John Stones every week he’d score 20 goals a season. So we play City and who scores? Popey.

In the changing room afterwards I said, ‘I don’t think you’d get 20 against Stones, Tom… you’d get 30’. Their players had a laugh. Kyle Walker and even some of the foreign lads were taking the p***. I don’t think Stones was too happy.

The coaches went into Pep’s office and he gave us a bottle of Rioja. He was asking questions and I was telling him about my dad Colin playing in the FA Cup semi-final in 1954. He was obsessed by it.

He said, ‘Any time your family wants to go for a meal just mention your name at my restaurant in Manchester’, which was a lovely gesture. I never took him up on it but I’ve still got that bottle of wine in the rack at home. It will never be opened. Certainly not by me!

Paul Heckingbottom

We (Sheffield United) played them in the FA Cup semi-final in 2023. We lost 3-0 to a (Riyad) Mahrez hat-trick but we were going strong in the Championship and he was congratulating us, saying, ‘See you in the Prem’. I had been trying not to think like that or get ahead of ourselves as there was still a month to go but it was nice to hear. He even told us they had been working on our set plays all week.

Last season at Preston North End, we had arranged to play two games in pre-season. One against City’s under-21s and another against Chelsea’s under-21’s. Shortly before it we got a call to say Pep had requested we play his first-team as he wanted to work specifically against a 3-5-2 shape that made it difficult for them to break down. And that was us.

We had a 20-minute chat and he was really open about managing and coaching. He knew bits from my Barnsley and Sheffield United days and referenced Tommy Doyle and James McAtee’s loans with me. He has genuine respect for every level.

He was really open, chatting about his relationships with certain players. He gave a couple of examples that I learned from.

Darren Moore

I faced him at Huddersfield Town. What I took from being on the touchline was that the detail and precision his teams play with is relentless. They didn’t let up at all. That comes from him being a perfectionist on the sideline with every pass, every move.

After, I popped in to see him and Txiki (Begiristain, City’s former director of football) as it was a chance to forge a link between the clubs.

He had me in for a day after I left West Bromwich Albion as an assistant. We had loaned Tosin (Adarabioyo) and they had just bought Morgan Rogers (from West Brom), who we had brought into the team. He was raving about how good he was.

Darren Moore was blown away by Pep Guardiola’s perfectionism (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

He never let me see everything at training. He doesn’t really allow anyone to go in. Even staff members weren’t if they were not in the first-team department.

I had lunch with the coaches but Pep had to go after an hour as there were foreign agents that he had to meet. The man is a maverick but he has a wonderful human touch. To be in that intensity for a decade and still have his people skills, no matter the level of the game, is an inspiration to all coaches.

Vitor Pereira

I had an opportunity to discuss some ideas about football when he was coaching at Bayern Munich. I travelled there for lunch, but it was not a lunch. We started to speak about football and with everything on the table he started to move the glasses and everything on the table. He started to play the game on the table.

It was a fantastic experience. I realised I was speaking to the Da Vinci of football. He was always a step ahead and brought so many new ideas. He is a genius.

Before my time in England, my first game against him was when I was managing Porto and we played Barcelona in the 2011 Super Cup. It was always a challenge as he thinks about the game in a different way. It was like a puzzle trying to find a way to stop his team and to create some problems for him.

In my last game at the Etihad with Forest in March, we drew 2-2. It was a good example of how to get something in transition as we scored two beautiful goals. It was a big point to stay out of the relegation zone and it is a big memory for me.

Football needs Pep Guardiola back as soon as possible.