Pep Guardiola is an obsessive, even when he has won championships, he talks to players about what they have to do. His obsession has paid off, Guardiola has won 35 championships as a head coach between Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Manchester City.
According to former youth soccer player Jules Shalhov his youth team once had the honor of being refed by none other than Pep Guardiola. Although it didn’t last long.
Shalhov told Men in Blazers that he was one of the teammates of Pep’s sons on a Manhattan youth soccer team while the manager was taking a year off and living in New York back in 2011.
Guardiola gets ejected as ref during NYC soccer youth game
As Shalhov remembers it, Guardiola was just a NYC soccer dad on his old U-12 soccer team and was a teammate of Pep’s son Marius. Guardiola would actually go to every single practice of his son and the coach at the time allowed the Champions League winner to coach the team simply because he was Pep Guardiola.
One day before a game the two youth teams were ready to play but the referee of the contest did not show up, Guardiola offered to be the official and the parents accepted, without really knowing who he was.
During the first half the coaching legend began to coach both teams on the field to the strange look of parents on the sidelines. At half time angry parents confronted “the ref” and asked him to not continue to officiate the match.
While the parents were gossiping about the intrusive father who was coaching when he should have been refing, word traveled quickly that the father in question was none other than Pep Guardiola.
Later all the parents began to circle the coach and apologized for their anger. Pep took it in cool Pep style. The event in question took place in New York City in 2011.