Speaking ahead of Manchester City's FA Cup fifth round tie against Wigan, Pep Guardiola has raised eyebrows by claiming that the English side passed up on signing him in 2005 because he wasn't good enough.
Guardiola left his boyhood club Barcelona in 2001, moving first to Italy, where he had spells at Brescia and Roma, then to Qatar, where he played for two seasons with Al-Alhi.
At the end of the 2005-2006 season, aged 34, he was a free agent, looking for a new club and a new challenge. Apparently, the challenge he fancied was to try and bring his Spanish flair and skill to Wigan Athletic, who had just achieved promotion to the Premier League.
That's according to Pep himself, who revealed to the press ahead of City's FA Cup game with Wigan that his desired move didn't happen because the 'Latics' didn't think he was good enough for them.
"I was not good enough!" he exclaimed, adding that it wasn't just Wigan who weren't keen. "I was really old. I tried to come here to play in English football. The same happened when I came to Manchester City, with Stuart Pearce, they were (both) so clever because I was not good enough."
However Guardiola's claims have been denied by Paul Jewell, who was Wigan's manager at the time. "I got a call from Guardiola’s agent and I rang Pep and left a message," he explained. "Five minutes later he (Guardiola) rang me back. He knew all about Wigan, all about our players — I was really impressed."
"He told me he would like to come and play in the Premier League. He was all set to come when his agent called me saying Pep had received a mind-blowing offer from Qatar. So it was Qatar or Wigan."
In the end, the Spanish midfielder chose a different option entirely, heading to Mexican side Dorados de Sinaloa, where he played for a six months, before retiring from football. Why he chose Mexico over Wigan, we will never know...