Andres Iniesta guarantees Pep Guardiola will turn Manchester City into a global superpower during his tenure
Iniesta believes his former manager is totally ready for the challenge of taking his new club to a new dimension
BARCELONA superstar Andres Iniesta GUARANTEES that Pep Guardiola will transform Manchester City into a global superpower.
As Guardiola prepares for his first Manchester showdown with arch-rival Jose Mourinho, Iniesta’s prediction will boost the blue half of the city.
And whatever happens at Old Trafford on Saturday, Iniesta believes the fast learning curve that Guardiola embarked on at the Nou Camp means he is totally ready for the challenge of taking his new club to a new dimension.
Iniesta became one of the world’s finest playmakers under Guardiola.
And he told the : “Pep knows how to adapt and I’m sure he’ll adapt to the Premier League.
“He has made sure he has got people on his staff who are going to help him do that. Mikel Arteta is only going to speed up that process.
“And they have strengthened the squad very well over the summer.
City have signed well and have a very competitive squad.
“Players learn day to day, from experience, team-mates and managers. I learnt a lot with Pep — he helped me to improve and he’ll do the same at City.
“I know Nolito very well because he was with me at Barcelona and he’s a team-mate with Spain. He’s made a great start.
“I hope that everything goes well for him and that he continues to play as well as he has so far.
“David Silva is already there. I have admired him throughout my career. He’s an exceptional player.”
And Guardiola, as Iniesta recognises, is an exceptional manager.
In his new book, The Artist, the 32-year-old recalls how he had to give the new Barca boss his own pep talk soon after his reign began in 2008.
Guardiola — who had been chosen as Nou Camp boss ahead of Mourinho — was under early strain after a poor start.
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Iniesta chose his moment to knock on the manager’s door. “Keep going, mister,” he said. “We’re training bloody brilliantly.
“Don’t worry, boss. We’ll win it all. We’re on the right path. Carry on like this, OK?
“We’re playing brilliantly, we’re enjoying training. Please don’t change anything.
“This year we are going to steamroller them all.”
The season ended with Guardiola’s troops landing the first treble of title, Copa del Rey and Champions League in Spanish history.
Iniesta said: “Things hadn’t started well, but I believed in him.
“I felt a connection. When things come from inside, you know they’re real. I felt I had to tell him, support him.
“We had come back from Euro 2008 and you could already see that this was different — the training, the communication, how the manager was.
“Suddenly there was a different way of playing and a different way of understanding what we were trying to do and how we would try to hurt the opposition.
“There was the coming out with the ball using the centre-backs or with the full-backs, then there was the tactic of dropping the holding midfielder between the central defenders.
“Until then there hadn’t been such a defined style and I identified with it. It changed everything and we needed that.
“Since then, if you watch, there are things other coaches have taken on that weren’t done until then.
“The central defenders coming out to play, or the full-backs.
“In sessions, instead of the two midfielders coming back to receive, he pushed us further forward for the next wave, supporting players higher, offering passing options.
“A line would be drawn on the pitch and the attacking midfielders would not be able to come back beyond that line to receive the ball — so the defenders then had to bring it out.”
Guardiola’s trademark intensity, too, was signposted from the outset.
Those sessions signalled why, eight years later, keeper Joe Hart was to find his City career brought to an abrupt end, with the England star farmed out to Torino on loan.
Iniesta added: “We would have exercises where if the other team is able to play six consecutive passes and you have failed to win the ball back, they win a point.
“Even the goalkeeper? Yes, he’s always been important for us, another player.
“For us the goalkeeper was an 11th outfield player.
“When you are playing out from the back you would look at how many players the opposition left high up the pitch.
“That would dictate to what degree the goalkeeper needed to come out to make the extra man. He allows you to have numerical superiority.”