My quality time with Guardiola - and getting his guide to Barcelona

• Published2 hours ago

I have talked a lot in this column about what I did as a manager before and during games, but what about immediately after the final whistle?

At Stoke, our ritual after home matches was always to invite the opposition's management staff into our room at the stadium.

We would provide food from the same menu as the boardroom, plus a good measure of wine, for them to either celebrate a win or drown their sorrows if they had lost.

I had always believed that providing good hospitality was important in such a cut-throat industry and a way of managers having a time to mix and meet.

This was a tradition I had experienced all the way through the English football pyramid. Lower down, it was a bottle of beer and some left-over sandwiches, but that never stopped managers from always sharing these moments together.

Once Stoke were promoted to the Premier League, we took this tradition further, by having hot food and a table which would accommodate the opposition staff and my staff together.

Along my journey over my 30 years as a manager, I was made aware that this tradition was only really observed in the British Isles, and not in mainland Europe.

The British managers would always come in after the game, but we made a point of inviting the foreign ones too - and they always joined in.

Carlo was coolness personified

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I had been welcomed into Sir Alex Ferguson's room upstairs at Old Trafford many times when he was United's manager and it was the same when he retired.

I remember having a glass of wine with Louis van Gaal when he was in charge, then going up to see Sir Alex, who had always been a manager who enjoyed our hospitality at the Britannia Stadium.

On one occasion when his United team had played there, someone from their team bus came up to tell Sir Alex that the lads were ready and waiting to leave - his response to being summoned was swift, and to the point! I'm sure most other British managers would have responded the same way.

When Jose Mourinho was in the Premier League, he was always full on, but was also exceptionally gracious with me - win, lose or draw - and my staff enjoyed his no-nonsense assessments of the games we played against him.

But we welcomed everyone in exactly the same way, whichever club I was with and whoever we were up against.

Carlo Ancelotti was coolness personified, and no wonder all his players love him - he is a great football man and human being.

Ronald Koeman was again great company and reciprocated our hospitality by serving up a dish of eels when we played at Everton. I was really not sure about eating it, but I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it was - and how gracious Ronald was too.

One story which shows the way we looked after people was when I was with West Brom and Antonio Conte's Chelsea side clinched the Premier League title at The Hawthorns in 2017.

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It was a Friday night game and afterwards we provided Antonio and his directors the means to celebrate. They certainly did that, to the extent that it was the early hours of the next morning before they left.

The club had provided them with my supply of wine, then provided even more from the boardroom - which had emptied hours before. The next morning I headed off to watch a game in Germany with a sore head and a few paracetamols.

All of the above managers and many British ones too have exactly the same principles. They are all desperate to win on Saturdays between 3 and 5pm, so get characterised by people's perception of them based on how they behave during games, or speak to the cameras straight afterwards when emotions are sometimes still running high.

Generally, though, we are all decent and hardworking coaches who, when we are away from the game, can be totally different people to our families and friends.

Guardiola's personal to-do list

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One person I've deliberately left out of the above list of managers I've enjoyed getting to know over the years is Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola.

I want to talk about Pep separately, because of the rumours that this could be his last season in English football.

My first encounter with him was when I was with West Brom. It was early in Pep's first Premier League campaign, 2016-17, and Manchester City had just beaten us at home. After the game I made sure my assistant Dave Kemp would get City's staff in for our customary drink.

I didn't join him in my room until after I had finished my post-match press conference, but there he was at the table with a glass of wine and chatting to all my staff.

As people will tell you, I forced him to eat with us too, while we discussed his early impressions of the Premier League and English football in general.

Having Kempy and Gerry Francis there meant the conversation never moved from Pep's own journey, and the fact he had managed one of the greatest club sides ever when he was in charge of Barcelona with Lionel Messi in his team.

He was very humble and proclaimed he could not fail to succeed with - I believe he said - six world-class players in his team, and a genius in Messi who could change games in seconds.

The entire time he was in the room, he never once brushed over any detail asked of him and he impressed everyone who was there that day - even the caterers commented on how warm and engaging he was to them.

Later that same season, our away game at Etihad Stadium was an evening kick-off and after the game Pep came and found me.

We had a drink and again had some food and, during our conversation, Pep got on to his time at Barcelona. I told him I'd never been but one day it may hit my to-do list.

He immediately asked for my email address and said he would invite my wife Debs and I to enjoy all the pleasures that city could and would provide.

I am still terrible with technology now, and was even worse then - so I gave him Debs' email address because I didn't have one.

The following weekend, after we'd had another Premier League game, I headed home to discover Pep had sent Debs a to-do list of Barcelona that he had compiled himself, and saying to make sure to contact him before we went to see if he would be around at the same time.

I am also useless at accepting gifts or invitations - even ones like that - and we never took that trip to Barca. Maybe we will go one day, though - and if we do hopefully Pep will be around.

I did not see him for a while when I stepped away from management in 2020, but we stayed in touch. It was the same with some of the other managers I've mentioned.

Last year, I helped to put together a documentary for Sky Sports about academy players who are released and what happens to them next, and Sir Alex, Carlo and Pep all provided great interviews for the programme, along with many more top managers.

Football is a family and we mustn't lose sight of that, whether you are sat at the top table or not. Pep is a great example of someone who gets that - he did not just change football, he is a really genuine guy as well.

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Sir Alex or Pep... who is the greatest manager of my time?

If Pep does leave City this summer, English football is going to miss him a lot.

During my career I faced four other City managers - Joe Royle, Mark Hughes, Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini. All four of them have given the game great service as players and managers, but none can compare with the effect Pep has had on City and English football as a whole, from grassroots football all the way up to the national team.

Where does he sit when we look at the greatest managers of the modern era? For me he is only behind one man, Sir Alex.

If you look back at when Pep joined City in 2016 and how seamlessly they both took to each other, you also have to remember what was in place before he was appointed.

Both Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano were already at the club, as director of football and chief executive, and both had worked with Pep at Barcelona. They wanted him at City and both of them understood the identity and direction he would want the club to take when he eventually took the reins.

Mancini and Pellegrini were both completely different characters but had done exceptionally well at City and both won the title there.

When Sir Alex arrived at United, they had not won the title for 19 years. The biggest difference between him and Pep, though, is that Sir Alex had to knock everything down and build it up again, himself.

He had people like Bobby Charlton and Martin Edwards there, who recognised it would take time and stuck with him when he had some bad moments in the early years, but it was down to him to do most of the work, from signing players and selling them, to producing a crop of outstanding young players and putting them in the team.

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Pep's footprints are everywhere

Statistics show that Pep is only just behind Sir Alex in overall trophies won in his career - and he could land more silverware in Saturday's FA Cup final - but he has his detractors too.

People always bring up the enormous amount of money have spent and some argue City's football can be boring at times - and, yes, that does frustrate lots of fans.

Sir Alex spent lots of money too, but in my time he will always be placed first, as the manager who rebuilt Manchester United and produced three different winning teams, that dominated English and, at times, European football too.

He is still my number one for those reasons, but no-one has affected our game - at every level from children and parks football up - like Pep has.

His footprints are everywhere and have dominated a decade that changed English football, and has not stopped evolving either.

Pep's trademark possession football that goes backwards and sideways is definitely being tinkered with, with City and other leading teams now looking to play forward earlier - something I definitely approve of!

The first leg of the Champions League tie between Paris St-Germain versus Bayern Munich was an unbelievable game to watch, where power, pace and the ability to run at defenders and beat them came to the fore again.

A game like that, which bounced from back to front continuously for 90 minutes will certainly not be missed by our top teams in the Premier League, who strive to bring games under their control.

But fashion always runs in cycles - you might remember a few months back when I told you that Kempy had been in his wardrobe to dig out his old bell-bottom jeans - and football is the same. Trends only last so long.

Wingers who can beat people when given one-on-one opportunities will, I'm sure now be encouraged to do just that.

Square or back passes when these players are in high positions in the opposition half could - I hope - fade away and be replaced by wingers who are encouraged to drive forward at every opportunity.

We don't know what the future holds but, wherever he ends up next, I am sure Pep will play a big part in shaping it.

His sustained success has been down to his ability to keep on motivating his City players to keep winning things year after year. To do that, he had to have that hunger himself, and to keep on adapting too.

Tony Pulis was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan.

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