da bet sport： Pep Guardiola is being showered with plaudits on the back of another Manchester City title win, but Dietmar Hamann says he will never be the greatest.

da bet7： The Catalan coach has delivered a remarkable era of success at the Etihad Stadium, with the Premier League crown captured for the fifth time in the space of six years and for the third season in a row. Many are now suggesting that the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss sits among the best to have ever graced a dugout, with his CV certainly pointing towards such a standing.

Hamann, though, is not convinced that Guardiola will ever rub shoulders with the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson – even if he goes on to emulate the former Manchester United manager’s treble triumph in 2023 – with the 52-year-old having achieved his success while working at clubs loaded with world-class talent and the deepest of pockets.

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Former City midfielder Hamann, speaking in association with , has told GOAL of those that Guardiola still sits behind on the all-time coaching list: “You can’t compare managers from different eras, it’s very hard. To manage a team these days, I think is a lot harder than it used to be – there was no social media, there were one or two newspapers and the journalists were at the training ground once or twice a week, now it’s every day. Times have changed and it’s very hard to compare them. What Ferguson did was exceptional. He was in the game for so long and what he did, he changed the game – he changed the game and he won the Champions League, which is the hardest thing in football. If you look at Jose Mourinho and what he has done – he won the UEFA Cup with Porto, won the Champions League the year after, at Inter he won the treble and now he has made two finals in two years.”

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Pressed further on why he feels that Guardiola is yet to enter the greatest manager debate, Hamann added: “I said always in the past that Guardiola has never done anything that other managers haven’t. Luis Enrique and Frank Rijkaard also won the Champions League in their first seasons at Barcelona. He came to City to win the Champions League. He might win it now, so that argument won’t stand anymore, but is he the greatest? For me, he won’t be. What he has done has been brilliant, but then you need to see what happens off the field – the players in the team that has been assembled over the years, with some being bought for big money and have already gone again. There are the charges which the Premier League has against them. He managed the best squad at Munich and at Barcelona of the best 20 players in the world, he probably had about 10 or 11 in his squad.”

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Plenty have credited Guardiola with having changed football, as the man that introduced tiki-taka and inverted full-backs to the world, but Hamann believes others have achieved more. He went on to say: “The football he plays is brilliant, but other people have done it too. Is he the greatest for me? No, he isn’t. If he wins the Champions League with City, he still wouldn’t be the greatest – but it is difficult to compare managers. If you see what other managers have done at other clubs, who haven’t had the opportunities and financial facilities that he has had at Barcelona, City and Munich, then I would rate other managers higher than him.”

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While City have remained a dominant force on the field, they have stood accused of having bought success off it. The Blues are facing 115 charges from the Premier League regarding supposed rule breaches, with many of those relating to financial matters.

Hamann said when asked if the Financial Fair Play questions cast a cloud over City’s achievements: “Of course it clouds it. There are rules in place and by the look and sound of it, 19 clubs obey the rules and one club didn’t. It is not four charges, it is 115. What people are so disappointed with is that they don’t cooperate with the Premier League. Don’t forget they were banned from the Champions League a few seasons ago. They were put in bail then because they made a deal – Paris and City were banned – and they said ‘alright, we’ll suspend the sentence for the next two or three seasons’.”