Svetislav Pesic revealed he would often talk about tactics with Pep Guardiola, both about basketball and football.

Pesic said that Guardiola told him about not liking Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Credit: Federico Pestellini/DPPI/Panoramic/SIPA, AP Photo/Dave Thompson - ScanpixSvetislav Pesic has been coaching basketball for 50+ years.

Throughout his lengthy career, he's met multiple greats of other sports as well.

In particular, Pesic has managed to form a relationship with current Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, widely regarded as one of the top football minds in the world.

"I have known Guardiola since his beginnings.

I was Barcelona's coach when he coached the B team, and we hung out a lot then," Pesic said in an interview with Sasa Cobanov from Index.

"When I arrived at Bayern, he came too.

I was there from 2012 to 2016, a full four years, he stayed there for three.

We hung out every day and talked a lot about tactics," Pesic revealed.

"I think it was worth it for both of us.

"Guardiola's Man City won their fourth consecutive English Premier League title last season, a new league record.

Overall, Guardiola is among the winningest managers of all time.

"He was always interested in how to organize a defensive transition after a turnover, which is the essence of the complete game in basketball.

In every sport, this segment of the game is very important, but it's crucial in basketball because every light-heartedly lost ball on offense is a scored basket [on the other end].

He was very interested in what training methodology to use to prevent this," Pesic said.

"Of course, it's impossible for a team not to lose the ball in offense, but if they lose it 15 times and they play against rivals of similar quality, they can hardly avoid defeat.

If you reduce that number below ten, you have a great chance of winning," Pesic explained.

"A huge motivation for me was to figure out how to get my team back after losing the ball and score a basket.

"I think I did a pretty good job in that regard, and all my teams pay a lot of attention to that part of the game.

In order for the team to learn this, there is a training method and tactics that the player must understand.

I talked a lot about it with Guardiola.

"Guardiola has coached multiple high-profile players throughout his illustrious career.

However, one of them has stuck out - Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

The ever-eccentric forward was brought in during the second year of Guardiola's tenure as the manager of FC Barcelona.

The Spanish coach admitted to Pesic that he never liked him as a player.

Their feud went public, as Ibrahimovic openly bashed Guardiola both in his interviews and in his book.

"Later, he told me that he had big problems with Ibrahimovic.

He told me he never liked that type of player, and he brought him in because he thought he would need it," Pesic said.

"However, that was not the case.

And what did he do? With Messi, he expanded the field.

The dimensions remained the same, but with Messi in the center forward position, he got the space he needed, and Leo did what he had wanted for years.

"Pep is also working in Manchester City today.

You can see that he mostly takes players shorter in height but technically perfect in order to increase the speed of the game and to beat the opponent by expanding the penalty area.

The game got faster, the field got faster.

"He expanded the penalty area, just like my idea in basketball is to expand the court and not to play with two tall players anymore, but with only one, and to use threes as much as possible and fours that have the ability to dribble, distribute the ball, and shoot.

I call this type of basketball total basketball.

That's how we played in Manila last year, that's how we played now in Paris," Pesic concluded.

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