Who is Pep Guardiola?

Josep Pep Guardiola I Sala was born in the year 1971 on January 18^th. He is a well renowned Spanish football manager and also a former football player. During his tenure as a player, Guardiola played in the defensive midfielder where he spent the majority of his playing career with the Barcelona team.

Pep was part of Johan Cruffy’s dream team that helped FC Barcelona win Barcelona’s first ever European Cup. Pep also went ahead to play for Brescia and Roma in Italy: Al-Ahli in Qatar; and for Dorados de Sinaloa in Mexico as he attended managing school.

During his tenure as a football professional in Italy, he served a whole four month ban after testing positive in a drug tests, however on appeal he was cleared on any wrong doing in the year 2009 before the Courts of Justice of the Italian Football Federation as well as the Federal Anti-Doping Courts of the Italian Olympic Committee.

As an international football player, he played for Spain and also in friendly matches for Catalonia. When he retired as a player, Guardiola started coaching FC Barcelona B. and on 8^th May 2008, Pep was named as the head coach for FC Barcelona. 

 On the 5^th June day of 2008,Pep signed his contract and started his first season as FC Barcelona’s manager, he led Barca into winning the treble of La Liga, the Copa del Rey, and the Champions League. This wins made Pep became the youngest UEFA Champions League-winning manager ever.

The season that followed saw Pepe help Barca win the Supercopa de España, the UEFA Super Cup, and the FIFA Club World Cup, bringing the manager's tally to the maximum of six trophies in six competitions in one year, thus completing six trophies sextuple in two seasons.

On the 8^th of September, in the year 2011, Pep was awarded the Catalan parliament's Gold Medal, the highest honour. On January 9^th the year 2012, Pep was awarded the FIFA World Coach of the year for Men’s Football award.

He won this award with 42% of the votes beating Sir Alex Ferguson Manchester United’s manager to second place where he received 16% and the third place was taken by Jose Mourinho who coaches Real Madrid a where he gathered 12% vote. 

On June 30^th the year 2012, Pep quit as Barca’s manager where he left after achieving a record 14 titles in a record four years being the clubs head coach. 

Pep was born in Santpedor, Barcelona, Catalonia, where he joined the football junior league Masia at the age of 13 years where he rose through the ranks at the youth academy of Barcelona for a record six years.