How Pep Guardiola inspired a huge cultural shift in the way elite clubs select their managers

I say this with all respect as someone who has the utmost respect for the Championship, a league I have covered more than any other over the last 15 years. But it seems a little strange that Enzo Maresca, Kieran McKenna and Vincent Kompany were immediately linked with such big clubs having achieved nothing more significant than promotion from the Championship.

This was not the case just a few years ago: no one was asking Marco Silva, Scott Parker, David Wagner, Daniel Farke or Chris Wilder to go straight to teams like Manchester United or Chelsea.

The Championship currently constitutes particularly fertile ground. Maresca looks set to take the Chelsea job after leading Leicester City to promotion. McKenna was linked with Chelsea and his former club Manchester United, before apparently deciding to stick with Ipswich Town and lead them to the Premier League. Kompany is now linked with Bayern Munich, despite failing to knock Burnley out of the bottom three last season.

Those with links to Pep Guardiola are particularly popular. Erik Ten Hag was the manager of Guardiola’s B team at Bayern. Maresca and Mikel Arteta were his assistant managers at Manchester City, where Kompany also played under him. Xavi also did it at Barcelona – a club he just left as coach. Even Ange Postecoglou can claim a more tenuous connection: his former club, Yokohama F. Marinos, is partly owned by the City Football Group.