Bayern Munich player Thiago Alcantara heaped praises on his former mentor Pep Guardiola saying that the current Manchester City manager has gotten more magical, experienced and tactical with time.
"I always make the comparison that the coach works like the players. When you put a player in a great team, he gets better and he makes all team-mates better as well. With the years, he got better as a coach, not just because of experience but he also got better players and he could do better things with them on the pitch. He got more magical, more experienced, more tactical, more everything," Goal.com quoted Alcantara as saying.
Alcantara has played under Guardiola's guidance at Barcelona before reuniting with the 48-year-old at Bayern Munich. Guardiola then joined Manchester City in 2016.
Recalling his time with Guardiola at Barcelona, Alcantara said, "He was at the Under-16 practice. I was there with my team-mates, and he was just teaching us how to play a positional game. We were in training and he saw that two or three of us were a little bit different. He came with us and said, 'What you did with the ball was great but try doing it this way'. You always take seriously what people with experience say to you."
"You could feel that he was very concerned about tactical things, technical things. You could see he was very good and he was Pep Guardiola, a former player. You just respect that and you have to learn from that," he added.
Alcantara also revealed about what was the biggest thing Guardiola taught him.
"The passion and the commitment to this sport, I think, is the biggest thing he taught me," Alcantara said.
He expressed likeness towards his club's current manager Niko Kovac, saying he is doing a "great job".
"Niko is a young trainer. He wants to win all the trophies possible with Bayern, to keep growing with the club. He's doing a great job and we like him," he said.
( With inputs from ANI )