05 PEP GUARDIOLA
“Please don’t change anything,”
pleaded Andres Iniesta. “We’re on the
right path and we’re playing well. Don’t
change anything.”
After one game of the 2008-09 season,
Pep Guardiola was feeling the pressure.
Barcelona’s new coach had lost 1-0 to lowly
Numancia in the La Liga opener, five days
after losing 1-0 to Wisla Krakow in a dead-
rubber Champions League qualifier. In their
next outing, Barça could only draw 1-1 with
Racing Santander.
However, Iniesta and his team-mates knew
the Catalans’ weak start was false. Having
sold Ronaldinho and Deco, the club were
entering a new age – but little did they know
quite how glorious it would turn out to be.
Results quickly swung the other way –
Barça won 19 of their next 20 league
matches – and by the season’s end,
Guardiola’s side had won a league, cup and
Champions League treble playing some of
the finest football ever seen. In four years
under their old player, Barça won nine major
trophies – including three straight La Liga
titles and two European Cup triumphs. And
then he was gone.
“The reason is simple,” he said. “Four years- that gets everyone tired.”
After a year out, he went to Bayern
Munich, moving club legend Philipp Lahm to
the base of midfield, dictating play with
full-backs, and mulling the possibility of
playing goalkeeper Manuel Neuer outfield...
Following three Bundesliga titles,
Guardiola’s 2016 move to Manchester City
was the most hotly anticipated appointment
in Premier League history. City fans had to
wait two years for a trophy under his tenure,
but it was worth it as they watched their
expertly drilled bunch of cyborgs smash the
league’s points record in 2017-18. In 2018-
19, they topped the table by winning their
last 14 games of the season.
“We had an intense competitive spirit, and
that came from the manager,” former
skipper Vincent Kompany told FFT. “While we
all know he’s a brilliant football man and an
exceptional tactician, what’s just as
important is that he is such a competitor.
We were so driven by him.”
Now to conquer his biggest hurdle
– winning the Champions League without
Lionel Messi.
04
BILL SHANKLY
Shankly did more than build Liverpool;
he formed a dynasty every bit as
lasting as the city’s other great team from
that era – John, Paul, George and Ringo.
From his very first day, December 14, 1959,
the one-time miner from Glenbuck, Ayrshire,
set about transforming a dying, listing,
decrepit Second Division outfit. “Liverpool is
not only a club, it’s an institution,” said
Shankly. “My aim is to bring the people close
to the club and the team, and for them to be
part of it.”
He wanted football played in the right way.
“After only one match I knew the team as
a whole was not good enough,” he said,
before signing Ron Yeats and Ian St John. He
brought through youngsters he could mould
like Roger Hunt and Tommy Lawrence, too.
To improve the team’s technique, he
adapted a drill he saw former Preston team-
mate Tom Finney perform. Four boards
formed a square and players spent two
minutes at maximum intensity hitting first-
time passes off the walls, or control and
pass. The Liverpool Way was born in those
sessions. Promotion followed in 1962, and
the top-flight title two years later.
He introduced their red shorts, a statement
of power designed to throw off Anderlecht in
the 1964-65 European Cup. That same year
witnessed the installation of the This Is
Anfield sign in the tunnel.
His death in 1981 ensured his legacy – the
15ft Shankly Gates, a plinth dedicated to the
club’s first famous European night at Anfield
(beating defending champions Inter in 1965)
and his statue beneath the Kop are all telling
reminders of the house Bill built. “He made
the people happy,” reads the latter’s base.
That was all Bill Shankly ever wanted.GREATEST
MAn AGERS100