Barcelona fan site Grup14 uploaded three very interesting infographics depicting the managerial statistics of Barcelona’s three “most successful coaches” through their first 100 games. While you won’t get any argument here about whether or not Luis Enrique, Pep Guardiola, and Johan Cruyff are the best managers in Barca’s history, we’re going to ignore the “top 3” debate for now and focus on the top two: Enrique vs Guardiola.
Guardiola is widely regarded as the most influential coach of the past 10 years. Most people would call him the best manager in Guardiola’s history. The following infographics, however, give some serious ammo to those who believe he is overrated.
First and foremost, I feel I should start things off by saying that the following statistics may have been chosen specifically because they favor Luis Enrique. Enrique is the statistically superior manager to Guardiola in ever category depicted except total trophies — and let’s not forget the importance of those. That being said, if you were asked to unbiasedly select statistics by which a manager should be judged, I bet that you would come up with the same exact stats provided in these three infographics, with perhaps a few more.
Secondly, we must recognize the players each manager had to work with, but doing so may cloud this whole debate further. Logic would seem to say that whoever had the better team should have had the better record. Some would say that Messi, Suarez, and Neymar are without a doubt better than Messi, Xavi and Iniesta, but how do we really know for sure? How do you compare arguably the best striking corp of all time with arguably the best midfield of all time; it’s apples and oranges.
Finally, this is only 100 games. Enrique probably still has at least one more season at the Camp Nou, and if his team suffers a dip in success, he could find himself looking up at Guardiola, statistically speaking.
Now that you’ve had some time to digest all of this, what do you think? Who is the best Barcelona manager of all time? Who wins Enrique vs Guardiola?
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