Of course he is!!
Hate the narrative that he's walked into ready made, successful clubs all of his career. He walked into a Barcelona side that has just finished third the season before and were over twenty points from the leaders. Forget Messi...without Pep that Barca team don't go on to play the way they did. Even if you factor in the criticism of Pep that he could only win the Champions League with Messi in his team...it doesn't take a genius to see that Lionel Messi hasn't won the Champions League in every singe season of his playing career. If it was easy for Pep to win it because of Messi, surely every Barca manager should have accomplished this too.
Even when he took over a Treble winning Bayern side...his three years there enabled them to win the Bundesliga four times in a row for the FIRST time in the clubs history. Not bad for a team that anyone could manage and a club that anyone can win the league with really. Players in that Bayern side are quoted as saying that their time with Pep was the greatest in their careers. I don't remember Ancelotti getting that amount of stick for failing to win the Champions League with Bayern either.
Even when he came to us we had just finished fourth...fifteen points from the top of the league. The media will tell you that he's had it easy because he walked into a side with Aguero, De Bruyne, Sterling, Silva, Fernandinho, Kompany, Otamendi but again the facts and league tables show that with that squad we could only just scrape fourth on the final day.
You could look at it and say that Mancini and Pellegrini won league titles and domestic cups with us but no one in the history of English football has won it the way Pep has won it. And no one ever will. He's genuinely redefined what it means to be successful. The man's a genius! He's the only manager in the history of football that's judged for not winning the European Cup every single season...this is despite the so called greatest manager of all time (Ferguson) only being able to lift it twice in his twenty six years!
Hate the narrative that he's walked into ready made, successful clubs all of his career. He walked into a Barcelona side that has just finished third the season before and were over twenty points from the leaders. Forget Messi...without Pep that Barca team don't go on to play the way they did. Even if you factor in the criticism of Pep that he could only win the Champions League with Messi in his team...it doesn't take a genius to see that Lionel Messi hasn't won the Champions League in every singe season of his playing career. If it was easy for Pep to win it because of Messi, surely every Barca manager should have accomplished this too.
Even when he took over a Treble winning Bayern side...his three years there enabled them to win the Bundesliga four times in a row for the FIRST time in the clubs history. Not bad for a team that anyone could manage and a club that anyone can win the league with really. Players in that Bayern side are quoted as saying that their time with Pep was the greatest in their careers. I don't remember Ancelotti getting that amount of stick for failing to win the Champions League with Bayern either.
Even when he came to us we had just finished fourth...fifteen points from the top of the league. The media will tell you that he's had it easy because he walked into a side with Aguero, De Bruyne, Sterling, Silva, Fernandinho, Kompany, Otamendi but again the facts and league tables show that with that squad we could only just scrape fourth on the final day.
You could look at it and say that Mancini and Pellegrini won league titles and domestic cups with us but no one in the history of English football has won it the way Pep has won it. And no one ever will. He's genuinely redefined what it means to be successful. The man's a genius! He's the only manager in the history of football that's judged for not winning the European Cup every single season...this is despite the so called greatest manager of all time (Ferguson) only being able to lift it twice in his twenty six years!