Southampton manager Ronald Koeman has revealed his close relationship with incoming Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola.
Guardiola and Koeman played alongside each other for Barcelona's 'Dream Team' under Johan Cruyff and the duo certainly shared a great rapport on the pitch.
Now Guardiola will come up against Koeman in the dugout next season when he arrives in the Premier League from Bayern Munich as manager of City.
Saints boss Koeman is certainly excited to square off against Guardiola and has gone on to hail the qualities of the 'down to earth' Spaniard.
Koeman told the Daily Mail: "Pep was a fantastic guy. He was eager to learn and he wanted to know everything. From the very beginning he was asking me everything about the Ajax youth academy.
"He would say, 'Ronald, how do they train? What do they do? How do they play?' He wanted to know about the Dutch school of football. More than any other player he wanted to know about one-touch football, about positional play.
"He had an insatiable hunger for information and a massive interest in the game. We spent hours talking football. There were months when I spent more time with Pep than with my own wife! We were always in camp or in hotels with Barcelona, travelling with the team all over Europe. But what struck me with Pep was that he was a very ordinary, down-to-earth guy."
Source: tribalfootball.com