Former Italy striker Luca Toni had a hilarious bone to pick with his former teammate, Pep Guardiola, when the pair recently reunited.
The two ex-Brescia players met for dinner with fellow club icon Roberto Baggio, and during the meet up, Toni filmed himself blaming Guardiola for leaving him without a club after making the ‘false nine’ popular.
Aiming the camera at him and the laughing Manchester City manager, he said in Italian: “Pep, you ruined football.”
“With the false nine, I couldn’t find a team for four years. Seriously,” he continued, with all three of them cracking up at the conversation. “Can you say that you only used the false nine with Messi [at Barcelona]?
“Do you even like centre forwards?”
However, Guardiola wasn’t having his claim, bringing up a certain Premier League Golden Boot winner.
“I have it, [Erling] Haaland, 60 goals,” he smiled. “We won the treble with that striker, but the centre forwards must be good! Understand?”
Toni responded: “Okay, but stop it with false nine now.
“Big centre forwards are better!”
Guardiola is known for his use of the false nine tactic, which involves positioning a player deeper than a traditional striker to create unpredictability and unsettle defences.
This was the case at Man City after Sergio Aguero’s departure in 2021, but changed when Haaland arrived from Borussia Dortmund in 2022, with Guardiola starting the Norwegian up top to be his bagsman.
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But his influence saw the false nine used across European football, sometimes leaving classic centre forwards like Toni in a sticky situation.
The former Italy striker – who is still the fourth-highest scoring Italy player of all time – played with Guardiola at Brescia from 2001 to 2002.
He went on to play for Palermo, Fiorentina and Bayern Munich, as well as Roma, Genoa and Juventus.
His twilight years were spent with Al Nassr, Fiorentina and Verona, before retiring in 2016.
Toni scored 324 goals in all competitions, with 659 appearances and 306 goals at club level, and 47 appearances and 16 goals for Italy.
