Pep Guardiola Highlights Impact of Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi Based Owners Ahead of Both Finals

It has been an incredible rise from obscurity to limelight for Manchester City since the takeover by the Abu Dhabi Group in 2008. The club has gone from being regular strugglers to one of Europe’s best.

Under the new management’s impressive leadership City have become a standard of measurement for how to run a successful club. The football on the pitch has been exceptional and accompanied with many trophies. It has been the making of a great team with the legacy about to be sealed in the next couple of weeks.

As the subject of how good the team has been is being discussed far and wide, Pep Guardiola has sought to give honour to whom it is due. The Catalan manager praised the club’s leadership in a recent interview as well as some players that have contributed to the success at different stages.

“We are where we are thanks to the people before. We learn. We learn from all of them. When you rebuild a team, it’s normal after six, or seven years, it’s because of the strength of the club. It doesn’t just belong to me. There was Sergio. Then Gabriel. Now Erling. He belongs to the Club. Not to me. If the Club doesn’t bring me here and sitting near me is Erling, we cannot do it. We underestimate our Club and hierarchy, it’s the key point of this organisation.

“They put the Club in the position, it’s thanks to the strength we have in the Club. Without these players, we could not do what we have done in these years. You also need a strong and solid Club. They are smart, wise and know exactly what we want to do. It’s very well run. Here in this business, everyone makes mistakes. Here there is no magic solution to everything you do. You make a lot of mistakes but try to make as less as possible. But here there is not a club, Sporting Director or manager where it is ‘do this and everything works perfectly’. You have to take a decision and have the courage to take it. And after, accept it. Do more positive than negative things. I think this club, not just in the last period but in the last 10, 12, 14 years, is doing really, really, really well.”

City are heading into two finals that could set the new bar terms of achievements for the future. Winning the treble will put the club on a different pedestal as a reference point for success. In fact, the team’s performance has many referring to it as one of the best in the history of the game, if not the best.

But this newfound success all started with the takeover in 2008 and so Guardiola is right to highlight the effort of the club’s hierarchy as well as that of players past and present in helping to build this dynasty.