Why subsequent season is about to be Pep Guardiola’s final dance at Man City

Barely a soul knocked around the building. Pep Guardiola was there, though, bright and relatively early. It was the morning after Manchester City‘s staff Christmas party five years ago and the mood remained celebratory.

The year had brought an unprecedented domestic Treble and the element of back-slapping still lingered. Sources said the players still had the drive to do more for their manager and Guardiola felt performance levels had been maintained, although results had dropped off. Liverpool threatened to run away with the Premier League.

What greeted Guardiola at the training ground hours later, and his reaction to it, tells all about what City will be missing when he eventually says adieu.

‘Back-to-back Premier League titles and nobody is working,’ he said when breezing through the offices. ‘What the…?’ It does not take great smarts to work out how that sentence ended.

City have won every single Premier League title since that season. Nobody has been allowed to settle and it is a standard set by Guardiola from boot room to kitchen, from boardroom to the hot desk offices.

When he leaves, what will vanish is this force of nature, this leader who drags everyone and everything with him, someone who has become an honorary Mancunian and – somewhat against his better judgement – a supporter of Manchester City.

This is what City have had from him. That drive, the sort that can knock people off their stride initially, and absolute insistence that what happens on the grass is a reflection of the organisation as a whole, for good and bad. 

That 2019-20 was their worst season since his first – picking up a mere Carabao Cup, the horror – proves this belief.

‘Pep enjoys carbonara,’ a source said. ‘He wants that every day, the best. He doesn’t want to then go to fried rice instead.’ 

We can talk about how he has reimagined English football, changing it beyond recognition so that now Hackney Marshes – or, closer to home, Hough End Fields – is full of amateur teams attempting to ‘beat the press’ and tinkering with inverted full backs.

A manager is a visionary when their jargon hits the mainstream and that is certainly the case for Guardiola.

We can talk about all that and the fact he is a serial winner, despite the surprising defeat to Manchester United at Wembley in the FA Cup final.

We know nobody holds a candle to him over here and that only Carlo Ancelotti has more Champions Leagues in their trophy cabinet.

We know that even if City are proven to have cut illegal corners in accelerating their rise, then this scale of domination is still not possible without Guardiola’s contribution.

We know what Jurgen Klopp thinks of him and the terms in which Mikel Arteta speaks of his master. Or how coaches in the lower leagues openly discuss him as a reference point. Bolton’s Ian Evatt has mentioned you again, Pep, how does that feel? Probably quite nice, actually, and he does genuinely notice these things.

He notices plenty and there is no hiding for those who work under him. He notices how his squad are playing for him and has, in the past, based decisions on his three contract renewals around that.

But this time is a little different in the sense that, if he is truly honest with himself, there is not much else to do in this part of the north west that he has called home for eight years.

It was only supposed to be three seasons, four at a push. What Guardiola has delivered is beyond City’s wildest dreams, but so too has been his commitment, further indoctrinated in the wake of the 115 Premier League charges. They have provided additional fuel which has helped keep him going.

It is all quite tiring this, however, and next summer feels like a natural conclusion. It is tiring railing against the world, riling up 20 footballers to convince them this one might mean more than the last. As Jurgen Klopp openly admitted during his farewell Liverpool season, there comes a time when you cannot keep going to the well.

The idea of Guardiola coaching in France has always been scoffed at – he has rebuffed Paris Saint-Germain’s persistent advances in the past – but the re-emergence of Serie A might make Italy more favourable than previously.

It is no secret that international football appeals. He has taken a sabbatical before and a chance for that would seem logical if the dates worked.

Even his last contract, signed in 2022, being two years rather than one prompted surprise within the club. Yet in an institution that gave him the conditions to succeed, he felt he could offer longevity that Barcelona and Bayern Munich would have yearned for. Manchester, the place and the politics, has not worn him down in anywhere near the same way.

All of this is what chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak is likely to impart on Guardiola when they speak about his future.

The pair of them are close, have spent holidays together and agreed that last contract while in the Maldives during a November international break. What Al Mubarak says to Guardiola matters to the Spaniard and a big pitch on staying that little bit longer is on its way.

The mood music around the Catalan and what he might choose to do has remained consistent over the past four months. Multiple sources, within the game and within City, have long held the belief that next season is the last dance for the best there has ever been.

City fear the end is nigh – some have been openly talking about it since New Year – and Al Mubarak’s powers of persuasion will be put to the test.

There had been considerable noise that Guardiola would not sign his second extension, in 2020, but this has been a little bit louder for a while. It creates the need for the next phase of Manchester City under the current regime, the planning that is required not to slip too far back while having a 115-charge shaped cloud hovering above.

What Guardiola will not do is leave his employers in the lurch and that is a respect thing, for Al Mubarak, for chief executive Ferran Soriano and for owner Sheikh Mansour.

Sporting director Txiki Begiristain is expected to depart around the same time – either before or after, rather than in conjunction – and it will present a real changing of the guard at the Etihad Stadium. This will be an important moment in City’s history and the managing of the post-Pep and Txiki era will not be for the faint of heart.

There is immediate interest in how this impacts next summer. The expanded 32-team Club World Cup, held in America for a month from June 15, overlaps the expiry of Guardiola’s contract.

If he does what pretty much all the main protagonists expect of him, then how do they negotiate that tournament?

Guardiola will rightly want to lead the team. If they were to reach the final, it would give the new man only a matter of weeks to prepare for the next season. That adds another fascinating dimension to Guardiola’s ultimate decision.

Perhaps the successor is there in the United States for a handover, which might sound strange, but then these would be exceptional circumstances.

Michel, the highly-rated coach of Girona, is being talked up in some quarters after guiding City’s sister club to the Champions League. 

Julian Nagelsmann, high up the list in recent years, has a contract with Germany until 2026, while the careers of some others previously discussed internally – Brendan Rodgers and Mauricio Pochettino – have taken different routes. 

Guardiola himself thinks Roberto De Zerbi has the ability to take the reins, but he is on Chelsea’s radar. It raised eyebrows that Xabi Alonso opted to stay at Bayer Leverkusen for another year when Liverpool came calling.

Whoever it is, what a void they have to step into. ‘He has elevated me to a level I didn’t know I could reach,’ midfielder Rodri said. ‘He gives you a toolbox and you have more tools than the rest.’

Other players, like Kyle Walker, talk about boundless energy, the sort of which Guardiola once feared would burn them out. It has not. ‘I can assure you that what he is like on a matchday he is like every day in training,’ Walker said.

‘He doesn’t put it on for documentaries or anything, that’s him and it breeds into you. You’re like a sponge and feed off it, because his energy rubs off on you.’

Beyond the training pitches, his twist on murderball and the short, sharp tactical meetings, Guardiola has understood the area. He has identified with the city and its people.

This aura is as difficult to replace as any of the tactical ingenuity.

City will hope they hit upon something somehow resembling him. Or better still, that he changes his mind to put the headaches off just a little bit longer.