Pep Guardiola’s coaching tree has become a forest. Across Europe’s touchlines, you see the same 3-2 build forming behind the ball, the same box midfield appearing and vanishing with a pass. The apprentices have gone out on their own.
Mikel Arteta is the most direct line. He sat beside Guardiola at Manchester City from 2016 to 2019, then left for Arsenal and built a side that presses with precision and attacks in rehearsed waves. City announced his departure with the kind of respect reserved for a peer, not a pupil. Arteta has since turned Arsenal into annual contenders with ruthlessly drilled set pieces and a “rest defense” that shuts down counters before they start.
Vincent Kompany absorbed Guardiola’s positional play as Manchester City’s captain, then imposed it at Burnley. Now at Bayern Munich. Bayern made his appointment official in May 2024 and, after an electric start in Germany, extended him through 2029. He still speaks like a center back: clear and uncompromising.
Xabi Alonso took a different path. He played for Guardiola at Bayern Munich, studied the rhythms of possession from deep, and later applied them at Bayer Leverkusen. The result: an unbeaten Bundesliga title and domestic double in 2023–24. Real Madrid confirmed him as head coach in May 2025, a homecoming for a player who now coaches with the same clarity he once showed as a passer.
Enzo Maresca managed City’s Elite Development Squad, returned in 2022 as a first-team coach under Guardiola, and took those patterns to Leicester for immediate promotion. Chelsea hired him in June 2024. You can see the blueprint in the club’s 3-2-5 build, the tempo control, the discipline in the half-spaces. Hours on training-ground geometry made visible.
Erik ten Hag shared the campus with Guardiola in Munich. He led Bayern Munich II from 2013 to 2015 while Guardiola ran the first team upstairs, a proximity that shaped his preference for structure and pressing triggers. His 2025 return to Germany with Bayer Leverkusen ended abruptly. Good ideas still need good timing.
Xavi Hernández, the on-field conductor of Guardiola’s Barcelona, tried to restore that same order when he took over at the Camp Nou in 2021. He left in 2024, proud of a league title but frank about the limits of a club in transition. The line from Guardiola’s touchline to Xavi’s was always direct.
Domènec Torrent, Guardiola’s long-time lieutenant at Barcelona, Bayern, and City, now runs Monterrey. He carries the details from a decade next to Guardiola and applies them in new contexts, from New York to Rio to Mexico.
Cesc Fàbregas played under Guardiola at Barcelona and is now shaping Como in Serie A. His teams try to solve games like puzzles, using the ball to move opponents rather than the other way around.
What binds these coaches is interpretation, not imitation. They’ve adapted Guardiola’s principles to their own contexts. Every weekend, the same patterns appear: the 3-2 in build, the box midfield, the inverted fullback who becomes a six. But each coach writes their own version. Arteta’s Arsenal doesn’t look like Alonso’s Leverkusen, which doesn’t look like Kompany’s Bayern.
The question now is whether the second generation—coaches who learn from Arteta or Alonso rather than Guardiola himself—will keep evolving the ideas or calcify them into dogma.
