Pep Guardiola has become a better manager during his time at Manchester City , according to one of the stars of his brilliant Barcelona side.
Guardiola has led Man City to back-to-back Premier League titles, collecting a remarkable 198 points across the last two seasons while winning five out of the six domestic trophies on offer.
Bayern Munich star Thiago Alcantara, who worked first with Guardiola at the Nou Camp and then during his time in Germany, has now explained what the boss does so well.
“I always make the comparison that the coach works like the players. When you put a player in a great team, he gets better and he makes all team-mates better as well,” Thiago told Goal.
“With the years, he got better as a coach, not just because of experience but he also got better players and he could do better things with them on the pitch.
“He got more magical, more experienced, more tactical, more everything.”
Thiago first worked with Guardiola as part of Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy and it seems he made an instant impression on the talented midfielder.
"He was at the Under-16 practice. I was there with my team-mates, and he was just teaching us how to play a positional game,” Thiago continued.
“We were in training and he saw that two or three of us were a little bit different. He came with us and said, 'What you did with the ball was great but try doing it this way'. You always take seriously what people with experience say to you.
“You could feel that he was very concerned about tactical things, technical things. You could see he was very good and he was Pep Guardiola, a former player. You just respect that and you have to learn from that.
“The passion and the commitment to this sport, I think, is the biggest thing he taught me.
“But at that time, you couldn't tell that he would be fabulous in the future.”
