Leicester City show why Pep Guardiola is most influential manager of his generation
Xavi Hernandez, Mikel Arteta and now Leicester City’s Enzo Maresca are strengthening Pep Guardiola’s claim to be the most influential football manager of his generation.
Leicester City have already carved out a special place in English football folklore by winning the 2015-16 Premier League at longer odds than bookmakers were offering on Kim Kardashian becoming US president.
But eight years on from their greatest ever season there is another remarkable storyline unfolding at the King Power Stadium, where new Foxes manager Enzo Maresca has guided them to a record-breaking start to the season.
Since Maresca took charge at Leicester in the summer they have won 13 out of 14 games in the Championship, the best performance by any team in the history of the second tier. On Friday they can make it 14 out of 15 when they host Leeds United.
Teams who drop out of the Premier League tend to have an advantage over long-term Championship dwellers both in terms of budget, thanks to controversial parachute payments, and quality and depth of squad.
But even accounting for that, Maresca has done phenomenally well. There is a bigger picture too: Leicester’s flying start has also added further weight to the argument that Pep Guardiola is the most influential manager of his generation.
Before landing in the Midlands, Maresca cut his managerial teeth under Guardiola at Manchester City. First, he led City’s under-23 side to the Premier League 2 title and then, following a shirt-lived spell at Parma, returned in 2022 to be Pep’s No2.
Maresca is not the first of Guardiola’s assistants to fly the nest and enjoy success in their own right. Mikel Arteta spent three and a half years under his fellow Spaniard’s wing before stepping out on his own at Arsenal. It’s fair to say he hasn’t looked back.
Tito Vilanova, Guardiola’s right-hand man at Barcelona, took over after his mentor left and won LaLiga by a record margin, although there is a case to be made that it was still Pep’s team and propelled by peak-era Lionel Messi.
But Guardiola’s former players are beginning to go on to great things. Xavi Hernandez, a key figure in his Barca side, has led the team back to the top of Spanish football and into the Champions League while playing a style that owes much to his predecessors.
His greatest managerial rival Jose Mourinho, by comparison, has no such legacy. Frank Lampard has had the most celebrated coaching career of Mourinho’s former disciples but was sacked from his last two jobs, at Chelsea and Everton.
The two greatest managers of the previous generation, in English football at least, Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, have also failed to spawn the managerial bloodline that some predicted that they would.
Ferguson’s old No2s Brian Kidd, Steve McClaren and Carlos Queiroz have had mixed fortunes, while Wayne Rooney is the latest former Fergie player to prove that little of his old mentor’s magic has been passed down.
Wenger might have given football The Invincibles, but Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Sol Campbell have proven anything but in the dugout. The less said about the managerial runs of Tony Adams and Remi Garde, meanwhile, the better.
Guardiola, of course, was himself a protege of Johan Cruyff, whose riff on the Dutch philosophy of Total Football made Barcelona kings of Europe in 1992. Sixteen years later, history would repeat itself in a manner of speaking.
The promising starts made by Arteta, Xavi and Maresca suggest that Guardiola will emulate Cruyff in claiming another title, that of most influential manager of his generation.