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.

La Liga in time

Spanish are sport lovers and in the second half of the 20^th century this love has generally been bestowed upon football. The First division of the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional (LFP), commonly known as La Liga in the English speaking world is the top professional association football division of the Spanish football league system.

La Liga has over 85 years of rich history, founded in the April of 1927 by José María Acha a director at Arenas Club De Getxo with the objective to develop a national football league in Spain. Initially it compromised of ten teams some of which were Barcelona, Real Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Real Sociedad, Arenas Club de Getxo, Real Union, Atletico Madrid and Espanyol.

Today La Liga is contested by 20 teams with the three lowest teams relegated to the Segunda Division and replaced by the top three teams of that division. This process helps in giving different clubs a chance to contest in the finest football league of the world. Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Athletic Bilbao, are the only three founding clubs of the league that have never been relegated from the Primera Division.

The La Liga constitutes of clubs that host some of the best football players from all over the world. Two clubs Real Madrid and Barcelona have dominated La Liga since the 1950’s with Real Madrid winning the title a record of 32 times and Barcelona 21 times. However in the last two decades La Liga has seen other champions like Atlético Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Valencia,  Sevilla, Deportivo, Real Betis and Sociedad. It is evident that the league has matured and is opening up in terms of competition and the days of blank domination by Real Madrid and Barcelona are coming to an end as both the clubs now face considerable competition from other clubs.

Being the top two teams of the league, the Barcelona Club and Real Madrid have die heart fans who call the clash of these two titans as El Clasico. A term that was originally used only to refer to competitions that were held in the Spanish Championship El Clasicso today has been generalized to include every single match between these two giants and rightly so because other than the UEFA Champions League Final, the matches between these two clubs are the most watched matches.

In terms of performance and La Liga championship title winnings the top 5 clubs of La Liga are Real Madrid with 32 title wins, Barcelona 21 wins, Atletico Madrid 9 Wins, Athletic Bilbao 8 Wins and Valencia 6 title wins. Additionally it is important to mention over here that according to the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) yearly rankings La Liga is the best league in the world right now and according to UEFA’s League Coefficient the strongest league in Europe for the past 5 years.