Breaking Down the Rivalry Between Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola

When Manchester City confirmed that Pep Guardiola was going to be their next manager, it was immediately clear that Manchester United owed it to football to appoint Jose Mourinho.

Of course, the club themselves really needed a manager of Mourinho’s calibre and standing in the game to compete with Guardiola at City. Louis van Gaal’s tenure had degenerated into a dull, ineffective mess, and the prospect of him going head-to-head with the game’s most admired coach hardly seemed a recipe for success.

But from a wider perspective, the prospect of the Mourinho-Guardiola rivalry reconvening in Manchester, trying to get its underperforming clubs—which both have the potential to be true giants of the contemporary game—off the mat and fighting again is an absolutely mouthwatering prospect.

And never let it be said that football will allow a narrative opportunity that rich to pass. Ed Woodward did what was right for his club, and for all of football, and gave Mourinho the job.

Guardiola and Mourinho have managed teams against each other on 16 occasions. The results make ugly reading for the latter. The former Barcelona manager has won seven to the former Real Madrid manager’s three. They have drawn the other six. Guardiola teams have scored 28 to Mourinho teams’ 18.

Guardiola in charge at #MCFC and Mourinho at #MUFC…game onhttps://t.co/738PPUovre pic.twitter.com/SXD4U94VKz

— BBC Manchester Sport (@BBCMancSports) May 30, 2016

The majority of those games came when the two managers were in charge at Spain’s big two. Guardiola was, for that period, in charge of what is a legitimate contender for greatest club side in the history of world football.

Even so, and in spite of that unfavourable head-to-head record, Mourinho managed to win one of the two league titles they directly competed against each other for.

As has been well documented, they did not seem to get on very well, despite the pair once working together at Barcelona when Bobby Robson was in charge—Guardiola was a player and Mourinho an assistant.

By the time Madrid and Barcelona met in the semi-final of the 2010/11 UEFA Champions League, the combative Portuguese manager had got under his old colleague’s skin.

Before the sides met in that European encounter, Guardiola had complained about a correct, marginal offside decision after a Copa del Rey match between the two teams, saying, per Goal: “The assistant must have great eyesight to spot that Pedro was two centimetres offside.”

In the run-up to the Champions League game a few days later, Mourinho responded:

Up until now there was a very small group of coaches who didn’t talk about referees and a very large group, in which I am included, who criticise referees. Now, with Pep’s comments, we have started a new era with a third group, in which there is only him, that criticises the referee when he makes correct decisions. This is completely new to me.

For some reason, this was the …

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