Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola burst out laughing when he met Sam Allardyce for the first time after his press conference where he claimed he was just as good as the Catalan coach, according to a member of the then Leeds United coaching team.
Allardyce took charge of Leeds at the beginning of May with the Yorkshire club seemingly doomed for relegation. The former Bolton Wanderers boss' first game in charge was a trip to the Etihad Stadium to face the Treble chasing Blues.
In one of his first press conferences, Allardyce decided to make the outlandish claim there was nobody ahead of him in football terms, including Guardiola.
He told reporters: "I may be 68 and look old but there's nobody ahead of me in football terms, not Pep, not [Jurgen] Klopp, not [Mikel] Arteta, so it's all there with me. I share what they do and I do what I do but in terms of knowledge and depth of knowledge, I'm up there with them – I'm not saying I'm better than them – but certainly as good as they are."
The comments took many by surprise, especially considering Allardyce had not been in the dugout since 2021 before taking the reigns at Elland Road. When posed with the Englishman's comments in his press conference, Guardiola replied: "He's right, I want to be honest.
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"Look what happened with Neil Warnock at Huddersfield. These [are] incredible managers. It looks like the young managers, with the tactics or whatever…
"But [the older managers] are really good, they help us be who we are, like Roy Hodgson at Crystal Palace. They have incredible experience, they know the game perfectly."
Opening up on the inner workings of Allardyce's comments, his assistant at Leeds Karl Robinson explained Guardiola took the quotes in good humour. He told talkSPORT: "It was brilliant, it was genius at work, it really was.
"We were having lunch two days before and he had a presser, and he [Allardyce] went: ‘I need to take the pressure off the players.' You could see it when you walked in, it was so low and down. They were playing Man City, the best team in the world with [Erling] Haaland and [Kevin] De Bruyne and [Ilkay] Gundogan and you think: ‘Uh oh’.
"He needed something. I said: ‘Well what are you going to do’ and he went: ‘I’ll figure something big man.' I remember when we got to City on the day, Pep just came up to him [Allardyce] and started laughing and shook his hand. He knew what he meant by it. It was genius in a way."
