Pep Guardiola
There are those who would think it mad to place Guardiola only third on this list. But those are people who drank the cool-aid long ago. If Guardiola wins the league and turns Manchester City into the most beautiful and dominant football side ever created then he will without a doubt be on the top of this list.
As of now though he happened to be the coach in residence when the greatest team of all time came of age at Barcelona. They had all been at La Masia since they were 10 and at Barcelona they teach tiki-taka from the earliest age groups. So he didn’t invent it, stop anointing the man king yet. He then went to Bayern Munich and managed at a team that had won an unprecedented quadruple without him literally the year before.
As of now Pep Guardiola has been in the literal best situations of any manager in history. He’s picked his clubs with incredible timing. That said…
IF he can turn Manchester City into the side they look like being in the early stages of this season he will prove that he’s been the missing factor. It’s simply hard to give too much credit to a manager who has had Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta, Xavi, Thomas Muller, Franck Ribery and Manuel Neuer in his squads. Every team he’s had so far would have been phenomenal without him.
The reason City is different is because though the funds are entirely unlimited but the squad also needed a lot of work. Pep has had the opportunity to make the squad entirely in his own image not that of the club before him.
He might be the best manager in the world but he has yet to prove it. Don’t make your praise so pedestrian and cheap. Jeeze.