Pep Guardiola makes official that he is closing his golden cycle at City

BarcelonaPep Guardiola leaves Manchester City. After days when everyone knew the secret, this Friday it has been made official with a farewell video from the Catalan coach. It was a logical step, as it will allow the Santpedor-born manager to be bid farewell by his fans this Sunday in the last match of the season. On Monday night, the Daily Mail reported on Guardiola's decision to end this victorious cycle in which he has managed to make Manchester City one of the best teams in the world. Now it is official.

According to the club's report, Guardiola will continue his relationship with the City Football Group, taking on the role of global ambassador. The position will consist of providing technical advice to the group's clubs, working on specific projects and collaborations. "What a time we've had together. Don't ask me why I'm leaving. There's no reason, but deep down I know it's my time. Nothing is eternal, if it were, I would be here. Eternal will be the feeling, the people, the memories, the love I have for my Manchester City. We have worked. We have suffered. We have fought. And we have done things our way. Our way" explained the coach. "I lost my mother during COVID and I felt how this club helped me overcome it. The fans, the staff, the people of Manchester, you gave me strength when I needed it most" he says in a video that has become a love letter to the club and the city of Manchester, citing Noel Gallagher and the band Oasis, the terrorist attack on the Manchester Arena in 2017, and the poet Tony Walsh.

The president of Manchester City, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, bid farewell to Guardiola with a message recalling how "over the last ten years, honesty and trust have been the foundation on which we have navigated every situation together with Pep, always understanding that we could find the right answer together. Guardiola always had the energy to work hard. As a result, the Club has a decade of memories and successes for which to be eternally grateful, and much more than that, an evolution that cannot be undone".

A few days ago, Guardiola already walked onto the pitch at the Vitality Stadium in Bournemouth dressed all in dark. More than 25 photographers were waiting for him. The Catalan coach was heading towards the bench, serious, while hundreds of photos were being taken of him. In the background, the Manchester City fans were singing ""One more year, one more year, Guardiola"". His wish will not come true, as Guardiola is leaving. But he will be able to be given a proper send-off during the last league match against Aston Villa. The last match of an incredible cycle where "we have left a legacy" according to Guardiola himself in the video. Despite the fact that this possibility had been talked about for months, the citizen fans were confident that the coach would not leave, as he had renewed until 2027. But he has finally decided to leave earlier. "It's time," says the Catalan, who wanted to dedicate emotional words to his wife Cristina and his children.

Guardiola will say goodbye to the City fans this Sunday, in the last Premier League match against Aston Villa. A match where he is no longer aiming to win the league. The draw at Bournemouth this week caused euphoria in north London, as Arsenal have been crowned Premier League champions after 22 years. Sunday will be the final act, the last match after a decade in which the name of this club has become totally linked to the Catalan coach. It will, therefore, be a great farewell party for Guardiola, who is closing a prodigious decade, in which he has completely changed the history of this historic club, which had a tough time with a relegation to the Third Division in the 90s.

City was bought in 2007 by the Abu Dhabi United Group, a private company owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed. And the club quickly realized that they wanted a coach like Guardiola, who was then at Barça. After his sabbatical year and his spell at Bayern, Guardiola finally arrived in Manchester in 2016, as the club had been paving the way for him by signing a former Barça executive, Ferran Soriano, to run the club and a good friend of Guardiola, Aitor Begiristain, to coordinate the sporting area. Guardiola's objective was to give the club personality through its play and to win the Champions League. And he has achieved both.

With Guardiola, the citizen club has won six Premier Leagues (half of their total) and also the first Champions League in their history, in 2023 against Inter Milan in Istanbul. The news was broken on Monday night by the Daily Mail and was quickly confirmed by other leading media outlets in England, such as The Athletic, which added that his replacement will be Enzo Maresca, until a few months ago coach of Chelsea and former assistant to Guardiola himself. The Catalan has spoken very highly of Maresca on different occasions. “He is very prepared and has already shown everything he can achieve,” Guardiola said when the Italian was at Chelsea.

In recent weeks, Guardiola has added two more titles to his trophy cabinet. First was the League Cup, known for commercial reasons as the Carabao Cup, when he defeated Arsenal 2-0. And then the FA Cup, with a victory against Chelsea at Wembley. In the Champions League, however, he could not shine after a tough defeat against Real Madrid. With these two titles, Guardiola was able to make his trophy cabinet, which totals – between Barça, Bayern Munich and Manchester City – no less than 40 official titles, even bigger. In England alone, he has celebrated 17 out of the 39 championships he has contested, placing the skyblues in a dimension that historically seemed restricted to Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea. In other words, the main objective of the ownership. If for decades Manchester United was the big team in the city and all of England, with Guardiola on the bench, the situation has completely reversed. Wayne Rooney, the former United player, published an article on the BBC yesterday explaining that Guardiola has been “the equivalent of Sir Alex Ferguson for this generation,” and added that, beyond the titles, he has raised the level of play and the demands on the entire English league.

With him on the bench, City has never finished below third position in a league as demanding as the Premier, in which they once became champions by reaching 100 points, a figure that no other club has ever achieved again. The worst position was in his first season.

The Italian national team has no coach

The Catalan coach took the reins of the club in 2016, replacing the Chilean coach Manuel Pellegrini. In recent months, City had been preparing for a new era without Guardiola, as became clear after Txiki Begiristain's resignation from the club's sporting director position. Now, Portuguese Hugo Viana is in charge of making sporting decisions, and he is betting on younger players to achieve a generational change in the squad: players like Bernardo Silva, the footballer who has played the most matches under Guardiola's management at City, and John Stones are running out their contracts and will not renew them after June 30. A year ago, one of the players who had been a pillar of the team, the Belgian Kevin De Bruyne, also left.

After more than ten years without a break, everything indicates that the coach will take a pause before deciding where to direct his professional career. He has always said that he would like to coach a national team. Italy, for example, has not yet found a replacement for Gennaro Gattuso after they failed to qualify for the World Cup again, and, as reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport a few weeks ago, they would have offered Guardiola the management of the team, taking advantage of the fact that he lived in Italy and speaks the language well. Right now, the very veteran Silvio Baldini is the interim Italian national team coach. Other national teams that have been linked with Guardiola in recent years have been Brazil, which has just extended Carlo Ancelotti's contract on the eve of the World Cup, or England.