Josep Guardiola handed Manchester City a new trophy when they won the FA Cup, but the Catalan insists his greatest achievement is his continued visits to Wembley, proof of their success
Pep Guardiola furthers his achievements by winning another trophy at Wembley
No wonder Josep Guardiola and his team think they are special. Winning 20 trophies in 10 years is nothing short of amazing.
No club manager has amassed silver medals as quickly as Guardiola and Manchester City. Even the great Sir Alex Ferguson was unable to achieve this during his long and illustrious reign at Manchester United.
But Guardiola wasted no time reinvigorating his side after beating Chelsea to add FA Cup qualification to the Carabao Cup they won earlier this season. And it wasn’t just the fact that Guardiola poured “pain” into champagne after allowing his stars just one glass of alcohol to celebrate the victory.
Guardiola wants his team to maintain their obsession with trophies and never take winning them for granted. Guardiola has more reason than most to feel smug, given the amount of money he has won.
But he knows that football has a habit of humbling people. And he wants his players to focus on what they can win in the future, not what they’ve won in the past. They start with an important trip to face Bournemouth on Tuesday, but nothing short of a win can keep their hopes of catching Arsenal in the title race alive.
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“It’s good[to taste the trophy]and I’ll always remember it. But you feel like you’re there and then after a few hours you’re at the bottom. Trophies are nice, but you can’t take them for granted. You start to think you’re special, but you end up being ostracized.”
Guardiola knows it was a shock to experience his first trophyless season since taking over in 2016. And it served as a reminder to City that they must never be complacent again.
City went on to win two more trophies, but Guardiola believes his greatest achievement was taking the club to Wembley an astonishing 24 times, including reaching the FA Cup final four years in a row.
Manager Josep Guardiola is trying to keep his players focused as they look to win a league that they can still win.
“They’re pushing me and I’m pushing them. Why should I be satisfied? Last season we dropped a lot and I didn’t do things well. I should have been more calm. We have a minimum standard. A lot can happen, but we were always there,” he said.
“I think the biggest title is to come here 24 times. You can win the Premier League and the Champions League, but we were able to play here 24 times because we were stubborn. That’s the biggest complement we can have as a club. We’ve done it and we have to keep working hard. That’s the biggest success. I can’t say more about the structure of the club.”
City, who endured a nightmarish six-hour train journey to London ahead of the final, will instead choose to fly to the south coast in Minday before facing Andoni Iraola’s side. And Guardiola knows winning the FA Cup should help keep City’s energy levels up.
He added: “The fatigue will be the same, but the energy will be different. If we had gone to Bournemouth and lost this, it would have been more difficult. We will go to Bournemouth and decide how we feel. We have played against Iraola a few times. They are a team with great rhythm and good pressing. We have two more games (in the league), Tuesday and Sunday. The cards are on the table and we know what we have to do.”
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