Some leading figures in football believe that the Catalan coach has unintentionally ended up doing more harm to the game than goodFormer Roma coach Fabio Capello doesn’t have especially fond memories of Pep Guardiola from their brief spell together at Trigoria. “He came to tell me how I should do my job,” Capello claimed in an interview with El Mundo, “and I told him: ‘Go for a run and then you can talk.’ That was the end of the debate.”It wasn’t really, though. Capello and Guardiola continue to clash over the Catalan’s footballing philosophy to this very day. “You know what I don’t like about Guardiola?” Capello continued. “His arrogance. The Champions League he won with [Manchester] City [in 2023] is the only one where he didn’t try anything funny in the decisive matches. “But all the other years, in Manchester and Munich, on key days, he always wanted to be the protagonist. He would change things and invent them so he could say: ‘It’s not the players who win, it’s me.’ And that arrogance cost him several Champions Leagues. I respect him but, for me, it’s clear.”Furthermore, even if it is no longer his fault, he has done a lot of harm to football.”Evidently, there is a personal element at play here, but Capello certainly hasn’t been alone in challenging the widely held belief that Guardiola has been nothing but good for the game…
