“I came for three years and said, ‘Let’s see what happens,’” said Pep Guardiola. “And the rest is history.” Come Sunday, it will be history: the ten years, the 20 trophies, the records, the feats that means he will go with a stand named after him and a statue commissioned to celebrate him. Guardiola is leaving Manchester City after Sunday’s game against Aston Villa. His 94-year-old father will be there; so, too, Ederson, the goalkeeper whose saves meant he won the Champions League in 2023. Suddenly, it is a time to reflect.
“It has been an experience maybe of my life,” said Guardiola. There will be one last match, without a Premier League title at stake but with more opportunity to soak it all in. “I want to say proper goodbye to my people on Sunday. I want to hug them, all of them, on the pitch.”
Guardiola can be defined by the medals. This week, though, he has been thinking about the messages. From Sir Alex Ferguson, from Kevin De Bruyne, from Manuel Akanji. He will have to ring Ferguson back; the Scottish accent was too strong to fully decipher the voice note. Guardiola shrugged off suggestions he is the game’s finest ever manager and deferred to Ferguson.
“He’s the greatest in this country,” he said. “I miss a lot Johan Cruyff, who’s not able to witness what we live. I’m happy that Sir Alex Ferguson, the greatest, could.” Guardiola has shifted the balance of power in Manchester decisively in City’s favour. He knows what Ferguson used to call them. He thinks the adjective needs to be removed.
“Sir Alex, we are not the noisy neighbours,” said Guardiola. “We are the neighbours, just the neighbours.” If six league titles in his decade have given City plenty of reasons to turn up the volume, a nostalgic Guardiola focused on the people more than the prizes. “Being a manager, you have to win and that’s why I’ve been [here] 10 years. But a part of that is not just that. So that’s why the phone call from Kevin means everything to me.”
When the expanded North Stand at the Etihad Stadium becomes The Pep Guardiola Stand, it will have plenty of meaning, too. The Catalan likes the thought that his father, Valenti, can see his surname there. “I like to feel that my vibe or my energy will be there forever,” said the younger Guardiola.
He is adamant, though, that he has to go. Jurgen Klopp, forever his greatest rival, decided to leave Liverpool when he felt he was running out of energy. That was Guardiola’s conclusion, too. “I feel I would not have the energy that is required [to continue],” he said. “I think the club needs a new manager, new energy. Start to write another chapter. I think it’s not good in an organisation to have people for many, many years. It’s good to shake, to move, a new face.”
That new face is likely to be Enzo Maresca, Guardiola’s former assistant. The 55-year-old won’t be jumping into a new job. For 17 or 18 years, he said, apart from his sabbatical in New York in 2012-13, he has had a game every three days.
Suddenly, the diary is blank. “Now rest,” he said. “No plans to train for a while. I have to live my life and see what happens. I need to breathe a little bit and relax. I’ll be away for a while.”
Whether Guardiola can switch off, whether a man as intense as him can adopt a laidback attitude to life, remains to be seen. But even though he does not bequeath a title-winning team, he goes having won both domestic cups this season and made considerable progress in a rebuilding job. “It’s the perfect moment, the perfect time,” he said. “Much better than last season, for example.”
Whether he might have gone then, but for the run of nine defeats in 12 games and the most troubled time of his managerial career, is a moot point. Instead, he takes his leave on a high, taking heart from Maresca’s inheritance. “The institution has incredible health, so it’s in a good position,” he said. The only problem with going, it transpires, was telling his players. “The speech was a disaster. I was so nervous,” he said.
There was life at City before him, as he knows. “So 93 [minutes], 20 seconds, that goal is the biggest moment of this club,” he said, citing Sergio Aguero’s title-winning strike in 2012. “And that is legacy.”
Guardiola leaves one, too. He has changed City’s history, changed their identity. A man who came to like much about Manchester befriended the Oasis guitarist.
“There is one sentence now coming to my memory, talking with Noel Gallagher,” he recalled. “He said one day: ‘Many years ago, we were a team that we were not able to win four games in a row. And now we are going [to win] four Premier League in a row.’ And I said, ‘Wow, that is a good sentence’.” It feels a suitable final word. And then, for Guardiola and City alike, time for a new chapter.
