Pep Guardiola's Manchester City won this Wednesday in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 against Marco Rose's Borussia Mönchengladbach (0-2). With this, the 'citizen' coach won not only the new coach of Borussia Dortmund, who he said is “exceptionally good”, but also a disciple of Jürgen Klopp, at the head of Liverpool, Pep's great rival in the Premier as it was in the Bundesliga.
Guardiola's City streak of 19 consecutive wins continued like this in Budapest against Gladbach. The coach of the German team, Marco Rose, played under Klopp 17 years ago for Mainz. And the day that Mainz went up to the Bundesliga for the first time in history, at the end of the 2003-04 season, in full celebration, Klopp took two of his players aside and predicted that in the future they would be great coaches and they would triumph on the bench. He got it right.
One was Sandro Schwarz (who coached Mainz and now coaches Dynamo Moscow, with former Klopp assistant Zeljko Buvac as sporting director). The other, Rose, today at Gladbach but is already the confirmed new Borussia Dortmund coach from next season. The downside is that since it was announced his team is not doing exactly well. In the last round of the Bundesliga, Marco Rose's Gladbach lost 2-1 precisely to Mainz and fell to 8th place, 9 points behind the Champions League area.
Pep, on the other hand, is in his best moment. His City headed the pass to the eighth of the Champions League, is leader of the Premier with 10 points of advantage over his immediate pursuers, Manchester United and Leicester, on March 20 he will play the FA Cup quarterfinals against Everton and will play on April 25 the final of the League Cup against Tottenham by José Mourinho. At the Puskas Arenas in Budapest, Bernardo Silva and Gabriel Jesus decided for Guardiola's men.