MANCHESTER // Pep Guardiola believes the group of high-class coaches in the Premier League will spur him on to become a still better manager.
The Catalan will renew a sometimes bitter rivalry with Jose Mourinho, with whom he clashed when they were in charge of Barcelona and Real Madrid, after he was unveiled as Manchester City manager.
And Guardiola, a winner of 22 trophies including two Champions League, feels that the Portuguese has already galvanised him towards glory.
While the world’s top players tend to be found in Spain and Germany, the game’s most garlanded coaches are found in England.
Guardiola will also lock horns again with Jurgen Klopp, whom he pipped to the Bundesliga title twice during his time at Bayern Munich, while he believes the triple Serie A winner Antonio Conte will prove an inspired appointment at Chelsea.
Defending champion Claudio Ranieri and Arsene Wenger, who has recorded 20 consecutive top-four finishes in the Premier League, are others to provide competition for Guardiola.
Read more:
Diego Forlan – Guardiola, Mourinho and Zlatan will make Manchester great again
“I think it’s great that top managers are here,” said the 45 year old. “Big managers take me as a manager to a different level. Competing with them takes me to another level. They push you to win things like the Champions League. And then you find out if you’re big enough of capable enough of running teams like Barcelona, like Bayern Munich, like Manchester City.
“The big coaches help me and Jose is one of them. My experience against him, against Klopp at Dortmund, they made me better.
“Conte is a master tactician, I think he’s a great signing for Chelsea. It’s going to be very interesting competing against him, Claudio Ranieri too and [Everton’s Ronald] Koeman as well.”
Guardiola believes that managing City is his biggest challenge to date and feels part of the difficulty is securing the consistency that many find elusive in the Premier League.
“I know how difficult it is here in England,” he said. “To find a team to win four, five, six games in a row is not easy.”
Guardiola said he will lean heavily on his assistants, who have the experience he lacks in English football.
He has retained Brian Kidd, who served on Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini’s coaching staff and is a former No 2 to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.
And Mikel Arteta, the former Arsenal captain, has retired as a player to take up a position on the City coaching staff.
“Kidd knows the club perfectly,” Guardiola said. “He knows the Premier League. He has been at City and United. Arteta is one of the best central midfielders there has been, he knows English football. He has got 12 or 13 years in Scotland or here.”
He offered encouraging words to captain Vincent Kompany, who was limited to 13 league starts last season by persistent calf problems.
Guardiola has tried to recruit another centre-back, with Aymeric Laporte a target until he decided to stay at Athletic Bilbao, while he is a high-profile admirer of Juventus’ Leonardo Bonucci.
“My dream for Vincent Kompany is to be fit,” he said. “The captain has a lot of experience, he’s a magnificent central defender but he has to be fit.”
He made it a priority to rejuvenate Raheem Sterling, who endured a difficult Euro 2016 with England and who Guardiola felt has struggled with the tag of the most expensive British player ever since City paid £49 million for him last year.
“Sterling has a little problem with the money they paid and that is in the mind of the people but I am encouraged and I am looking forward to showing him how good a player he is.”
A manager who worked with a core of Catalan players at Barcelona and a group of Germans at Bayern said he would like to build around English players at City too, but lamented: “They are so expensive.”
Guardiola was quick to state he has no interest in managing Spain and envisages continuing his career elsewhere after City. “I don’t think so,” he added. He has a three-year contract at City and it should be an exciting ride. “Fasten your seatbelts,” he said.
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport
