Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola enters his third age as all-time great

W ould it have mattered to posterity if Pep Guardiola had not won the Champions League again? Would it have mattered if he had remained stuck on two European titles, his last triumph Barcelona’s sumptuous 3-1 victory over Manchester United at Wembley in 2011?

We can tell ourselves that we know what Guardiola is, how he had transformed football and our understanding of what is possible; that we know the magnitude of Arrigo Sacchi, who won two European Cups, and Rinus Michels, who won one, and Valeriy Lobanovskyi, who didn’t win any; but, still, it feels appropriate to have it confirmed, just as it was fitting to have Lionel Messi’s greatness confirmed at the World Cup.

And this is a tragedy of football’s modern age: this season has seen the consecration of an all-time great player and an all-time great manager, and yet it will be remembered as the season when sportswashing won. Messi won in Doha, played for a Qatari club and shills for Saudi tourism. Guardiola won in Erdogan’s Turkey, manages an Emirati club and was an ambassador for Qatar. And that cannot but taint their genius.

Three Champions Leagues/European Cups pulls Guardiola level with Bob Paisley and Zinedine Zidane, one behind Carlo Ancelotti. The assumption in 2011 was that he would keep racking up the European titles but, even after his 12-year hiatus, there seems little reason now, so long as he remains at City, why he should not go on to equal and probably surpass Ancelotti. City are a club built in his image with extraordinary resources and a marketing department that has secured a series of incredible sponsorship deals; they are the best side in the world and their pre‑eminence should continue.

Comparing that to, for instance, the achievement of Brian