Pep Guardiola bids to become first coach to win Club World Cup with three teams

Pep Guardiola will this week attempt to create more history with Manchester City, both for the club and personally, too.

Should the Spaniard lead his side to the Fifa Club World Cup crown in Saudi Arabia on Friday, he will become the first manager to capture the trophy four times – and the first to win it with three different clubs.

City, meanwhile, are looking to add the Club World Cup to their trophy cabinet for the first time. The current European champions, debuting in the tournament, have already won the Premier League, Uefa Champions League, FA Cup and Uefa Super Cup this year.

Here, we cast our minds back to Guardiola’s three Club World Cup successes thus far, as City enter the 2023 tournament in Jeddah at the semi-final stage on Tuesday, against Japan’s Urawa Red Diamonds.

With the UAE hosting the Club World Cup for the first time, Barcelona came into the tournament chasing a historic sixth title in 2009. They entered the competition at the semi-final stage, where they came back from an early goal to defeat Mexico’s Atlante 3-1 at a packed Zayed Sports City. Winger Pedro etched his name into the record books by scoring in six official competitions in the same season. In the final, Barcelona were again forced to come from behind when they went a goal down to Argentina's Estudiantes through Mauro Boselli’s 37th-minute opener.

Pedro proved again to be the man for the grand occasion, though, with the substitute rescuing the match with only a minute remaining by converting Gerard Pique’s flick-on to send the majority of the 43,000-plus crowd wild. Barcelona then clinched the trophy five minutes into the second half of extra time, when Lionel Messi chested home a Dani Alves cross to see off his compatriots at the