Pep Guardiola claimed comparing his different Manchester City sides was like “comparing mum or dad” and described the Manchester United treble-winning side as “special”.
Guardiola was talking to Rio Ferdinand on BT Sport in an extensive interview covering his thoughts on Inter Milan, his legacy at Manchester City, and different aspects of his time at the Etihad in the lead up to the Champions League final on Saturday.
The former Manchester United defender, who won the Champions League under Sir Alex Ferguson in 2008 but later lost to Guardiola’s Barcelona team in the 2009 final, asked the Spaniard where his current team ranked alongside his past vintages at City.
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He said:: “It’s so difficult to say. Is mum or dad better? Why we are here it’s also because of where we came from. I’m not saying the team of 100 points was worse than this.
“Maybe we are more solid? Our back four, back five, back six, all the players are defenders, maybe in the past we didn’t have that. But the way we played when David Silva was here, with Sergio [Aguero], with Leroy [Sane], with Raheem [Sterling], wow, we made a really good season.
“But it’s important to still renovate the team, except I would say Kevin [De Bruyne] and Gundo [Ilkay Gundogan] and John [Stones], we renovated the team almost completely.”
“You cannot imagine the conversations with my assistant coaches… to discover the secret and improve the team. Everything that’s now in the team comes from six or seven years ago. Same here with Sergio [Aguero], [Vincent] Kompany, many players, it has been so fun.”
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When he turned to the treble-winning side of Manchester’s other team, United, he acknowledged the currently singular achievement in English football.
“In my opinion what I remember, because I was a little boy, was how good they were,” he reflected on United’s 1999 vintage. ”This is my first feeling. Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Roy Keane, three or four strikers, [Andy] Cole, [Dwight] Yorke, [Teddy] Sheringham, Ole [Gunnar Solskjær]. I remember how good they were, otherwise you can not achieve it.
“Apart from the quality that they had, you have to be a special mentality, special characters of the team, the manager, the history of Old Trafford. These kinds of things always help to do these kinds of things. I don’t know how many years English football is in this world, but for only one team to do it, that means how difficult it is to do it.”
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