Arteta, Xavi, Kompany and even ten Hague! The Spaniard is still in business, but the legacy is already catching up with him.
A nice scene: moms and dads, boys and girls stand along the potholed driveway in front of the soccer club’s training base. From time to time an expensive car pulls up, the driver lowers his window and the children look inside to see their idol up close and ask for his autograph. This is what everyday life looks like for fans of Burnley, which has secured entry into the Premier League.
Judging by the experience of Sean Dyche, there will soon be a pub in the city under the name of the new coach of the “Claretians” – Vincent Kompany. At the same time in the APL, Mikel Arteta and Arsenal were fighting for the championship with Manchester City, although it would be too daring to imagine such a thing even in the autumn. In Spain, Xavi, in his first full season at the helm of Barça, won La Liga by a huge margin over the Madrid giants.
Pep is the guru.
It doesn’t take more than one try to remember what this trio have in common. They all owe their coaching skills in one way or another to Josep Guardiola, all of them preaching “Pep’s philosophy” in their approach to the profession. It would be offensive to believe that the coaches who worked with him are trying to simply copy the Spaniard’s style in the smallest detail, because each of them has an individual style of working. But the influence of the former Barcelona and Bayern coach should not be underestimated.
In the same vein, Xavi answered The Athletic’s question. This is not surprising: under Pepa’s guidance, the Spaniard became part of one of the greatest teams in history and won everything possible. “I thought he was the best coach in the world even before the first trophy, and for me he is still number one. I don’t want to compare us: he’s had an incredible career, and I’m just starting out,” the Barcelona coach said modestly.
Xavi’s coaching career began at Al-Sadd in Qatar, where he showed his main obsession to the players from the get-go. “He always shows us the statistics on ball possession, and that figure invariably seems too low. His ideas were very clear from day one: he wants us to have the ball and not for the opponent to touch it,” described the philosophy of Xavi Santi Cazorla, the former Arsenal and Spain midfielder.
