Barcelona 2009

Coach: Pep Guardiola

Pep Guardiola's first season in senior management produced arguably the greatest single campaign any club side has ever had: a sextuple of La Liga, Copa del Rey, Champions League, Spanish Super Cup, UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup, all won across the 2008-09 season and the opening months of 2009-10. Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta were entering the peak of their extraordinary partnership, with Messi scoring 38 goals in all competitions in a role increasingly shifted centrally as a false nine, while Xavi and Iniesta controlled matches through the possession-based 'tiki-taka' style Guardiola refined from the Cruyff-Rijkaard lineage. The Champions League final against Manchester United in Rome was won comfortably, 2-0, with goals from Eto'o and Messi, a result that felt like a changing of the guard in European football's balance of power. This Barcelona squad, drawing heavily on graduates of the club's La Masia academy, is frequently cited alongside the great Milan and Ajax sides of previous decades as one of the finest club teams ever assembled.