Pep Guardiola hits 600 top-five league games managed, won over 400 matches
Wherever he goes records tumble. In 2009, Pep Guardiola won six trophies in a single calendar year with his infamous Barcelona side.
That team also won two Champions League trophies in three years and are renowned as one of the best, and most aesthetically-pleasing, outfits to ever play the game.
At Bayern Munich, the Spaniard won the Bundesliga title the earliest it had ever been claimed and took the Bavarians on a 19-game winning streak. When he came to England to manage Manchester City, many questioned whether his ‘tiki-taka’ style could work in the cauldron of the Premier League.
After winning six of the last seven league titles, including becoming the first team in English history to win it four times in-a-row, it’s fair to say that that particular criticism has been answered. This season, his Man City team have started fairly slowly, somewhat reminiscent of last term’s woes.
Defeats to Tottenham and Brighton have already left the Sky Blues playing catch up. However, Sunday’s emphatic 3-0 Manchester derby win has them back on the right track and that victory meant Guardiola has reached yet another milestone.
The Etihad encounter was the 600th top-five league game that Guardiola has taken charge of, and from those matches, the Spaniard boasts a simply frightening record.
Guardiola has been a winning machine in the world’s top divisions. From his 600 games, he has won as many as 446 – a win percentage of 74%.
He has suffered just 69 defeats – a loss-rate of just 11.5%. His teams have scored a sensational 1,501 goals, whilst only conceding 464. That’s 2.50 goals scored per game and just 0.77 goals conceded per game. Perhaps even more impressively, from the 16 seasons he has taken charge of a club in one of the top-five leagues, he has won the league title 12 times
At Barcelona, Guardiola won LaLiga three times, and finished second in his final season to José Mourinho’s Real Madrid. At Bayern Munich, he won the Bundesliga in each of his three campaigns in Germany. And during his nine full seasons at Man City, the Spaniard has won the Premier League six times, and never finished outside the top three. His team came third in his opening campaign in English football, as well as last season, and also came second to Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool in the 2019/20 campaign. But how does Guardiola’s top-five league record compare to the other elite managers this century?
Guardiola’s 74% win percentage trumps all other managers who have taken charge of at least 200 top-five league matches since the turn of the century. And by some distance. The next coach on the list is Sir Alex Ferguson, who managed 513 Premier League games since 2000 and boasted a 68% win percentage from those matches. In third is Italian manager Antonio Conte, who has a 66% win percentage from 361 games in the Premier League and Serie A. Current PSG boss Luis Enrique is fourth with a 65% win-rate from 262 games.
Legendary manager Carlo Ancelotti takes fifth, having managed as many as 849 top-five league games this century with a 62% win percentage. Laurent Blanc (62%), Mourinho (61%), Ottmar Hitzfeld (61%), Diego Simeone (60%) and Massimiliano Allegri (60%) also feature in the top 10. Some truly iconic names, but Guardiola betters them all. Man City may not be able to wrestle the Premier League title back this season, but the Spaniard’s impact on Europe’s top-five leagues has been truly monumental.
