Although there are thousands of coaches with the desire to be successful and triumphant in soccer, not all of them succeed. And much less do they go beyond the borders of a country, city or national team. The privilege of being contemporaries of Josep Guardiola and Sir Alex Ferguson makes those who, with use of reason, saw them manage after retiring as professional footballers, are touched by the magic wand.
With Manchester City's 3-1 away win over Leipzig, the Catalan manager surpassed an all-time record owned by the Scotsman until yesterday: 103 wins as a manager in the UEFA Champions League since it was first played in 1956. With Barcelona, Bayern Munich and the aforementioned English team, the Spaniard managed to beat the former Manchester United coach, a legend of European and world soccer.
However, there is one record that he has not yet achieved, but which he could surpass very soon, since the Italian Carlo Ancelotti, who has 108 victories in Europe's top club competition, will leave in January to coach the Brazilian national team in place of the interim Fernando Diniz. He would thus be much closer to being the leader in this category.
What's the other record Guardiola is going out of his way to achieve?
Alex Ferguson, according to the website Be Soccer, holds 48 awards in his career as a men's soccer manager, the most winners in the history of the game. The Briton is followed by the reigning Pep Guardiola with 36 stars and is adding more and more every year. Romanian Mircea Lucescu is in third place on the podium with one less. The list is completed by the following names: Valeri Lobanovsky (30 titles), Luis Felipe Scolari (28 titles), Jock Stein (26 titles), José Mourinho (26 titles), Carlo Ancelotti (26 titles), Ottmar Hitzfeld (25 titles) and Giovanni Trapattoni (23 titles). This is the famous top 10 of the DT's with the highest number of personal conquests that everyone wants to break at some point.
