Claudio Pizarro: "Pep Guardiola the best coach I've had, Jupp Heynckes a fantastic human being"
Werder Bremen striker Claudio Pizarro has seen and done it all over the course of a Bundesliga career spanning more than two decades, but it's his time spent working under Pep Guardiola and Jupp Heynckes at Bayern Munich that ranks among his fondest memories.
Pizarro - now 41 and in his final season as a professional footballer - was part of Heynckes' revered treble-winning team of 2012/13, and spent the last two years of his second stint at Bayern learning from former Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola, adding Bundesliga titles five and six, a fifth DFB Cup, the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup to his collection.
Despite being behind Mario Mandzukic and then Robert Lewandowski in the pecking order, the Peruvian still managed to stick away 25 goals and produce 14 assists in 71 appearances across two seminal chapters in the most successful era ever witnessed at Bayern.
"Pep broadened my footballing horizons even further," Pizarro told the Weser-Kurier of his two-season lesson under Guardiola. "He has a completely different vision of football compared to other coaches, he's the best I've had.
"Tactically speaking, and in terms of how he thinks about football, I believe there is no better coach than Pep Guardiola.
"Heynckes was also great, he's a fantastic human being. He helped the team so much, and the fact Bayern brought him back so often shows just how good he is."
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Pizarro also reserved praise for Thomas Schaaf, his first coach on German soil at Bremen, and former Borussia Dortmund strategist Jürgen Klopp, now of Liverpool.
"Thomas always supported me," he recalled. "That's really important for a player. Our relationship was built on trust, but I would certainly have liked to have played under a coach like Klopp. As a player, I find him very exciting."
Not that Pizarro should have any regrets. In the first of his four career spells with Bremen, the Peruvian scored 29 Bundesliga goals in 56 matches. He spent six seasons in Munich, where he netted a further 71 goals and won Bundesliga-DFB Cup doubles in 2003, 2005 and 2006, before returning to Werder - via English Premier League outfit Chelsea - plundering 60 Bundesliga goals between 2008 and 2012.
Watch: Claudio Pizarro - career best bits
Now into his fourth and final stint at Werder - his third sandwiched his second at Bayern and a one-season lay-over at Cologne - 'Piza' sits three goals shy of 200 in the Bundesliga. He is the German top flight's oldest goalscorer, and until last season was the division's record foreign marksman.
That honour now belongs to former teammate Lewandowski, but goals in 21 successive calendar years in the Bundesliga - 22 if Pizarro can add to his 197-strike tally in 2020 - is one best-mark that may never be beaten.
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