On the face of it, Manchester City's new management may seem like a mismatch.
In the top job remains Pep Guardiola, who has won league titles in Spain, Germany and England, putting together some of the greatest sides in history in the process.
Soon to be alongside him on the bench will be Juanma Lillo, a wandering journeyman whose 37-year career to date shows a long list of jobs and not a single title, major or minor.
However, City's new assistant is no footballing incompetent – on the contrary, Pep himself credits Lillo with making a vital contribution to his understanding of the game.
Indeed, Lillo was nothing short of a trailblazer when he first took up coaching, getting his first break at the improbably young age of 17 with local club Amaroz Ke in his native Tolosa before achieving moderate success at a host of lower-league outfits.
Next Match
By 1995, he had become the youngest coach in the history of La Liga at just 29, guiding Salamanca up to the top flight from the third-tier Segunda Division B.
Salamanca's stay in Primera proved short, with Lillo relieved of his duties midway through the 1995-96 season, which ended in relegation for the club.
The following summer, however, he was back, this time at the helm of Oviedo, and an otherwise routine defeat to mighty Barcelona proved a pivotal moment in the career of the Catalans' midfield general Guardiola.
“We lost 4-2, but we played really well," Lillo recalled to reporters. "Suddenly, there was a knock on the dressing room door and Pep was there; he hadn't changed yet.
“He had come to ask me if I minded chatting for a minute – as if I was going to be annoyed about talking to the best centre-midfielder in the history of football.
"He told me he loved how I put my team together and wanted to stay in touch. What started as a professional thing soon turned into much more.”
Getty
Such was Guardiola's respect for Lillo that before Barca's 2003 presidential election, he promised to make the Basque coach if he were appointed the club's new director of football by Lluis Bassat, who was running for the top job at Camp Nou.
That dream team never came to fruition, though, as Bassat lost out to Joan Laporta, but when Lillo subsequently took charge of Mexico's Dorados he called on Pep to add vital experience to his side and the midfielder jumped at the chance to join his friend in Sinaloa.
Sebastian Abreu, who also formed part of that Dorados team, later revealed that Guardiola was almost obsessive in his eagerness to learn from Lillo.
“On the day Pep arrived, he watched our training session and ran off to the dressing room to look for a pen and pad. He called over, grabbed Juanma by the arm and sat down with him,” the Uruguay legend recalled to ESPN.
“This goes on every day – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – and we start to get intrigued. If I learned one thing in my career, it's that the stars are like sponges, so I go and ask, 'Can I come too?' Pep said 'Sure, no problem.'
"So, I went, sat down and didn't say anything. Pep would say, 'OK Juanma, we did reduced spaces today, three against three with a man spare – why?'
"He wanted to find out the objective of every training session, if it was to mould the team or to find out about the opponent. He knew it was never just training for the sake of it with Juanma.
“One day Juanma said to me, 'Look closely at Pep; this guy has no limits. Remember that.”
The well-travelled forward also told TyC Sports on another occasion: “For Pep to say that Juanma is the best speaks volumes about his work.
"Lillo is another (Marcelo) Bielsa case: they get called failures for not winning by those who look at the result and not the style of play.”
The man who began his coaching career while still a teenager has never been afraid to continue his education.
As well as spells in Spain with Almeria and Real Sociedad following his stint at Dorados, Lillo took the opportunity to further his horizons, taking charge of Colombian giants Millonarios and Atletico Nacional before moving on to Asia to take charge of Japan's Vissel Kobe – where he earned the admiration of Andres Iniesta – and then, most recently, Qingdao Huanghai in China.
He also found time to serve as Jorge Sampaoli's No. 2, accompanying the Argentine towards the end of his time with the Chile national team and at Sevilla, before returning to his role as a head coach.
It is easy to write off Lillo based on his lack of silverware. But from Pep to Abreu to Iniesta, the 54-year-old also boasts a long legacy of players with glowing reports of his management techniques who see no little similarity between the duo's approach to the game.
In Lillo, the City boss will add a wealth of experience and know-how to his bench – and also someone who believes without hesitation in the free-flowing passing football the ex-Barca boss has preached throughout his coaching career.
What looks like a mismatch could well prove to be a match made in heaven.