Fittingly, it took a dire performance from a dismal and dreary United against the worst team in the Premier League to push Guardiola’s magnificent project over the line. And fittingly, too, Mourinho greeted it with one his most awful displays: lashing out at his players and painfully recalling his own record of title wins as well as his defeat of City. It marked a new low for José’s gracelessness and that’s quite a crowded field.
There’s nothing not to admire about Pep: from his golf swing to his ability to fill a grey rollneck to the fact that he liked to shoot the breeze over lunch with Johan Cruyff at Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli restaurant in Barcelona (quite a surfeit of excellence, but you wouldn’t half like to be there). Oh and he has also produced a sublime football team, the best we have ever seen. Probably.
But amid all this Pep-mania, don’t forget that other great foreign manager working in England — Jürgen Klopp, King of the Kop, and not a man to let the opportunity for some massive overexcitement ever go to waste.
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