Lionel Messi labels Pep Guardiola as “from another world” in huge praise for Manchester City manager | OneFootball

Football legend Lionel Messi has issued fresh praise upon his former coach at FC Barcelona and current Manchester City boss, Pep Guardiola.

Two of the game’s all-time greatest in their respective areas of the sport, Pep Guardiola and Lionel Messi played a vital role in building up and executing some of the finest football ever witnessed during their time together at FC Barcelona.

Across just a four-season working relationship at the Camp Nou, that thrust both men to the very forefront of top-level football, Guardiola and Messi brought a remarkable 14 trophies to Barcelona including two UEFA Champions League honours.

Such is the mutual admiration between the pair that there was a staggering opportunity for a reunion at the Etihad Stadium back in 2020 as problems heightened between the Argentine forward and Barcelona’s hierarchy at the time.

Ultimately, no such reunion would come to fruition and Messi would go on to make the switch out to Paris Saint-Germain, before closing out the final years of an exceptional career in the United States.

Despite operating in very different aspects of the game today, the publicly exclaimed praise for one another continues to flow, with Pep Guardiola consistently pointing towards his former player in press conference duties at Manchester City.

Now, speaking in an interview with Simplemente Futbol, the Inter Miami forward revealed his belief that Guardiola may have ‘done harm’ to football by making all those within the game emulate Barcelona as best as they could.

“Pep Guardiola is from another world,” the legendary Argentina international said.

The 37-year-old continued, “He is different, he sees things no one else does. He changed football. Everyone wanted to copy us.

“In fact, he kind of did harm to football, because people tried to play like our Barcelona.”

Many journalists have often put the idea of the Catalan’s present day star forward Erling Haaland replicating Lionel Messi in one way or another to Pep Guardiola, although the Manchester City boss has often shut down the idea during media duties.

“Nobody is like Messi… Leo has been like Cristiano (Ronaldo) I would say; both have been 14, 15 years scoring an amount of goals every season, arriving in the last stages (of competitions),” Guardiola said in January.

Guardiola continued, “Erling (Haaland) is a different type of player, everybody knows it! But in terms of numbers scoring goals? They are similar.”

There may be opportunity for Pep Guardiola and Lionel Messi to reunite this summer as Manchester City head to the United States for the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, albeit not facing Inter Miami at the group stage of the competition.