Josep "Pep" Guardiola Sala (Catalan pronunciation: [?u'z?b gw??�i'?l?

]; born 18
January 1971) is a Spanish professional football coach and former player who is the
manager of Premier League club Manchester City. He is considered to be one of the
greatest and most successful managers of all time.[3][4][5][6] He holds the record
for the most consecutive league wins in La Liga, Bundesliga and Premier League.
[note 1]

Guardiola was a creative and technically gifted defensive midfielder who usually
played in a deep-lying playmaker's role. He spent the majority of his career with
Barcelona, forming a part of Johan Cruyff's Dream Team that won the club's first
European Cup in 1992, and four successive Spanish league titles from 1991 to 1994.
He later captained the team from 1997 until his departure from the club in 2001.
After leaving Barcelona, Guardiola had stints with Brescia and Roma in Italy, Al-
Ahli in Qatar, and Dorados de Sinaloa in Mexico. He was capped 47 times for the
Spanish national team and appeared at the 1994 FIFA World Cup, as well as at UEFA
Euro 2000. He also played friendly matches for Catalonia.

After retiring as a player, Guardiola briefly coached Barcelona B, with whom he won
a Tercera Divisi�n title, and assumed control of the first-team in 2008. In his
first season as the first team manager, he guided Barcelona to the treble of La
Liga, Copa del Rey and UEFA Champions League. In doing so, Guardiola became the
youngest manager to win the aforementioned European competition. The following
campaign, he led Barcelona to four trophies, including winning his second Spanish
league title as manager. In 2011, after leading the club to another La Liga and
Champions League double, Guardiola was awarded the Catalan Parliament's Gold Medal,
their highest honour.[8] The same year, he was also named the FIFA World Coach of
the Year. In Guardiola's final season at Barcelona, he again won four trophies,
before departing in 2012. He ended his four-year Barcelona stint with 14 honours, a
club record.

After a sabbatical period, Bayern Munich announced Guardiola would join the club as
manager in 2013. In his first season at the club, he won four trophies, including
the double of Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal. Guardiola won seven trophies during his
three-year tenure in Germany; winning the Bundesliga every season he was there, as
well as two domestic doubles. He left the Bavarians for Manchester City in 2016,
and guided them to a Premier League title in his second campaign in charge,
breaking numerous domestic records as the team became the first to attain 100
league points.Born in Santpedor, Barcelona, Catalonia, Guardiola joined La Masia at
age 13 and rose through the ranks of Barcelona's youth academy for six years,
making his d�but in 1990 against C�diz. As Phil Ball writes in Morbo,
In his first week at the club, Johan Cruyff turned up unannounced at the Mini
Estadi, a venue just down the road from Camp Nou used by Barcelona B. Just before
half-time he wandered into the dug-out and asked Charly Rexach, the youth team
manager at the time, the name of the young lad playing on the right side of
midfield. "Guardiola � good lad," came the reply. Cruyff ignored the comment and
told Rexach to move him into the middle for the second half, to play as pivot. It
was a difficult position to adapt to and one not used by many teams in Spain at the
time. Guardiola adjusted immediately, as Cruyff had suspected he would, and when he
moved to the first-team in 1990, he became the pivot of the Dream Team.[9]

Cruyff utilised the young midfielder in the absence of the suspended Guillermo
Amor. He became a first-team regular in the 1991�92 season, and at only 20 years
old was a key component of a side that won La Liga and the European Cup. The
prestigious Italian magazine Guerin Sportivo heralded Guardiola as the finest
player in the world under the age of 21. Cruyff's "Dream Team" went on to retain La
Liga title in the 1992�93 and 1993�94 seasons. The side was strengthened by the
recent signing of Rom�rio, again reached the 1994 UEFA Champions League Final, but
were beaten 4�0 by Fabio Capello's Milan side in Athens. Cruyff left in 1996, with
Barcelona finishing fourth in the 1994�95 season and third in the 1995�96 season,
but Guardiola retained his position at the centre of Bar�a's midfield.

In the 1996�97 season, Barcelona, this time led by Bobby Robson, won three cups:
the Copa del Rey, the Supercopa de Espa�a, and the European Cup Winners' Cup. Much
of the Dream Team had by this time left, with new signings such as Lu�s Figo and
Ronaldo taking over from Hristo Stoichkov and Michael Laudrup. In 1997, Guardiola
was named as Barcelona captain under new manager Louis van Gaal, but a calf muscle
injury ruled Guardiola out of most of the 1997�98 season, in which Barcelona won a
league and cup double. At the end of the season, Barcelona rejected offers from
Roma and Parma (of around 300 million pesetas) for Guardiola. After prolonged and
complicated contract talks, he signed a new contract with the Catalan club that
extended his stay until 2001.