Bayern Munich star Thiago Alcantara has lauded praises on Pep Guardiola who rates as the best manager in the world.
Guardiola could be credited as the man who discovered Thiago Alcantara and thought how play football having coached in Barcelona’s famous LA Mascia academy, promoted him to the first team and then worked again with him at Bayern Munich.
Together, they lifted 15 trophies with Barcelona and Bayern Munich combined.
Alcantara is proud of having worked with Guardiola and had this to say when asked to give his honest opinion about the Manchester City manager.
‘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 teammates better as well”, Thiago told Goal.com in an exclusive interview.
“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”.
Asked to describe his main qualities, Thiago said: “He got more magical, more experienced, more tactical, more everything”.
Recalling one particular encounter with Guardiola back when he was in academy, Thiago revealed the manager did something that changed everythign he knew about football.
“He was at the Under-16 practice. I was there with my teammates, he was just teaching us how to play a positional game.
‘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 doing it this way’. You always take seriously what people with experience say to you.”
Guardiola created history at Barcelona by winning the youth and senior league title with Barcelona’s youth and senior team.
It was under him that the version of tiki-taka football was born which Spain copied to win the 2008 and 2012 European Championship along with the 2010 World Cup.
Thiago added: “You could feel that he was very concerned about tactical things, technical things. You could see he was very good he was Pep Guardiola, a former player. You just respect that and you have to learn 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”.
