Legendary striker Samuel Eto’o believes that the only thing that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola and ex Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho have in common is their desire to win.
Guardiola and Mourinho have been the two defining managers of the game since the turn of the millennium, having enjoyed tremendous success over their careers, but they couldn’t be further apart on their view of the game.
While Guardiola has his teams playing beautiful possession football and be progressive in attack, Mourinho has developed a much more pragmatic and cautious approach which led to the pair’s epic rivalry, first in Spain and then in Manchester.
Eto’o is uniquely positioned to judge both coaches as he has won a Champions League under the stewardship of both and he has revealed that there isn’t much the pair have in common.
“The only common point these two coaches have is the desire to win,” the Cameroonian told Gazzetta dello Sport.
“They are completely different personalities and have a different vision of football.”
Eto’o played a key role in Guardiola’s first season at Barcelona in which they won the treble, but the duo didn’t get along and he was used in the deal to bring Zlatan Ibrahimovic to the club from Inter the next summer. The 39-year-old would go from strength-to-strength in Italy and won the treble again under Mourinho, and it’s clear from his previous comments on his managers where his loyalties lie.
”I can’t compare Mourinho to Guardiola, one of them couldn’t win the Champions League with Bayern Munich and the other one did it with Porto,” Eto’o said last year.
“Pep had lived all his life in Barcelona but during the years I was there, he didn’t understand the squad. He didn’t live the life of our group.
“I told Guardiola, ‘you will apologise to me because it’s me who will make Barca win, not Lionel Messi’. That was the situation at that time. Messi would later emerge, but you could ask Xavi, Andres Iniesta and the others, that was my era.