Her devoted Instagram followers, who currently number 587,000 and are steadily growing, have been gushing over the images. A stoic elderly woman, who is 86 years old, was cleaning the front door of the stone-built house that her working-class family has lived in for the most of her life in a tranquil Spanish hamlet an hour north of Barcelona despite the pain in her arthritic knees.
While tracking Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola's ascent to the verge of football fame, I came across these opposing images. They demonstrate how far he has come from his lowly beginnings and capture the heart of his unexpected journey in many ways.
His daughter Maria, a model and 22-year-old, is the stunning young woman posing in a crop top.
She has been promoting a recent trip to Turkey this week, no doubt to the delight of the risky swimsuit company she represents. Her overt message is that she will be returning to Istanbul tonight to watch her father's team play Inter Milan in the UEFA Champions League final.
City would become just the second English side to capture the famous Triple Crown—winning the Premier League, FA Cup, and European Cup—in the same season if they prevail, and bookmakers are giving them odds of 2-9 on doing so.
It would be the ultimate validation of Guardiola's brilliance, whose reinvention of football's finer arts has been compared to the way The Beatles altered popular music.
It marks the conclusion.
Guardiola, a romantic whose favorite novel is Don Quixote, was persuaded to move with his family to the city of redbrick terraces and rain-lashed cobbles by this earthy image and the chance to dethrone the club of George Best and Bobby Charlton.
After trophy-filled tenures at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, one would assume that his decision to join City was also influenced by his rumored £19.7 million pay.
However, he is now easily identifiable as a working Mancunian, riding through Deansgate while wearing a flat cap and stopping at Sainsbury's for a bottle of toothpaste. Having a conversation with Noel Gallagher, who is rumored to have a stack of Coronation Street films, and allowing selfie-takers to approach him as
At the age of 13, Guardiola was signed by Barcelona and overcome homesickness to board at their renowned youth program, La Masia. This was the beginning of his great playing career.
His technique was excellent, without a doubt, but what really stood out was his extraordinary capacity for foresight—his ability to marshal others while commanding their respect—and to predict moves and passes.
He was known as Mr. Perfect because he consistently went above and beyond what the coaches required. He was seen by the legendary Johan Cruyff, who was then in charge of Barcelona, and who later served as his mentor.
The young Guardiola acknowledged that despite his obsession with football and its tactics (a friend refers to him as Mr. 32 Minutes because that's how long he can converse before his thoughts return to soccer), one of his greatest strengths was his ability to read people.
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