A clue came when Pep Guardiola said part of him would leave with Bernardo Silva. It wasn’t strictly accurate: it turns out all of the Manchester City manager is set to go when his captain departs.
Guardiola’s final season at the Etihad Stadium has taken place with his future providing the backdrop: there have been times when, looking drained, it felt like his last but others when, energised by a new-look team, it felt like he might see out a contract that runs until 2027.
Now it looks as if he is indeed set to leave. An era is ending. Guardiola is unlikely to have done the maths on it, but his valedictory match, against Aston Villa on Sunday, will mean he has managed City more times than anyone else, a 593rd game to Les McDowall’s 592. He is approaching 200 more victories in their dugout than anyone else. Calling him City’s greatest manager is utterly uncontroversial. The surprise is not that he is going now, but that he has had such longevity.
The manager who did four years at Barcelona and three at Bayern Munich had seemed on a personal global tour. He instead became the longest-serving manager in the Premier or Football Leagues (given that some of Simon Weaver’s time at Harrogate was spent in non-league). He was the exotic import who became part of the furniture. He was mocked, envied, admired, imitated.
There were times when English football seemed to change Guardiola, when City won the Champions League with a back four comprising players who were all centre-backs by trade, or when they scored the most goals from set-pieces in 2021-22, when he befriended Neil Warnock or when he missed Bayern Munich against Paris Saint-Germain to watch Stockport County; there were more when it felt he changed English football, that he Guardiolaised it. When League Two teams tried to pass out from the back, when managers with passing philosophies were fast-tracked to bigger jobs, when possession statistics reached new heights. It was all part of his impact.
It was nevertheless felt most in the blue half of Manchester. City were founded in 1880. Guardiola arrived in 2016. He has won 60 per cent of their league titles, 38 per cent of their FA Cups, 56 per cent of their League Cups, 100 per cent of their Champions Leagues, European Super Cups and Club World Cups.
In the history of English football, only Sir Alex Ferguson, with 13, has more than Guardiola’s six league titles; in the unlikely event he can overhaul his former assistant Mikel Arteta in the run-in, he will break the current tie for second with Bob Paisley to hold that position solo. No one else has reached four consecutive FA Cup finals or won four straight League Cups or won four consecutive league titles.
The obvious retort is that he has had vast resources and that questions surround the legitimacy of those funds. Certainly, City spent heavily at both the start and end of his reign, though less so in the middle. Aided by their prowess at selling, they had a lower net spend than Arsenal and far lower than Manchester United. As Chelsea have proved, buying is no guarantee of success. But Guardiola’s City often bought well and invariably paid well. Usually, if not always, they had the biggest wage bill.
And, while it is more than three years since the Premier League levelled 115 charges at City, Guardiola goes without them being resolved. His achievements could be reframed, at least in some eyes. While there are no accusations of wrongdoing by him, he has been outspoken in the club’s defence. The broader argument is that, if City breached rules, including before Guardiola’s arrival, it created a platform upon which he could build.
Which he did, reaching remarkable heights. No one else has posted 100 points in a Premier League season, as City did in 2017-18, with a record 106 goals. No title races have had the statistical stratospheres of his City against Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool: 98 points against 97 in 2018-19, 93 against 92 three years later. That Liverpool team had the misfortune to come up against the Guardiola machine.
Many other clubs may think they would have won more but for Guardiola’s remarkable ability to hoover up silverware. He has 20 trophies, a cup double in his final year. He could yet depart with a third treble from a third City team; arguably a lesser one, too.
The side that completed a domestic hat-trick in 2019 was his first great City outfit; his gambit of using Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sane as high-speed wingers meant they had more in common with his Bayern than his Barcelona. Kevin de Bruyne and David Silva were the seeming No 10s repurposed as “free eights”, in the Belgian’s phrase; Ederson the footballing goalkeeper who was a revolutionary after Guardiola first exiled Joe Hart and then botched the succession by bringing in Claudio Bravo.
But by 2022-23, many of the City greats he inherited had gone: Vincent Kompany in 2019, David Silva in 2020, Sergio Aguero in 2021, Fernandinho in 2022. The treble that included the Champions League that had felt like his holy grail at City came with a different cast list and structure; possession players instead of genuine wingers on the flanks in Jack Grealish – whose £100m move, other than that season, was a letdown – and the ultra-versatile Bernardo Silva, but a giant striker reaping 52 goals, in Erling Haaland. There was a back four built around height, rather than the technicians Guardiola used to sneak in at left-back.
Perhaps the most Guardiola-esque of all the sides may have been the transition team in between Aguero and Haaland, with its rotating cast of false nines, with Joao Cancelo the playmaker full-back, with Ilkay Gundogan transformed from midfield metronome into a box-crashing goal hunter whose late double sealed a comeback to win the title in 2022.
Gundogan was one of a number reinvented by Guardiola, improved beyond recognition. Sterling got 30 goals one season. Rodri won a Ballon d’Or. John Stones completed the most dribbles in a Champions League final since Lionel Messi.
One of the criticisms was that Guardiola should have won the competition before 2023, and more often. He was always conscious that, after Rodri’s goal against Inter Milan in Istanbul, Ederson still needed to make several saves to ensure City held on.
But the vagaries of knockout football counted against them; it was easier to be the best over 38 games. Real Madrid became their kryptonite, knocking City out in Guardiola’s last three seasons, and four times in total. There were hard-luck stories of penalty shootouts, dramatic comebacks, VAR interventions. There were also some of Guardiola’s selection decisions that backfired, lending themselves to the idea that he overthought them; at Anfield in 2018, or Tottenham in 2019, or against Lyon in 2020. The most damaging of all came in the 2021 final against Chelsea, Sterling surprisingly selected, Rodri and Fernandinho not, the top scorer Gundogan anchoring the midfield.
Given how much Guardiola got right, there was sometimes a fascination with what went wrong. His debut season was underwhelming; he wanted 10 new signings when he arrived, the club could only furnish him with five and the ageing team Manuel Pellegrini left were unable to play Pep-ball. Then, in the autumn of 2024, came the sudden, spectacular fall of the treble winners, condemned to nine defeats in 12. It felt as though Guardiola had been blinded to the evidence of their decline, neglecting a rebuild; or maybe leaving it for a successor.
But the competitor in him committed to the club, signed a new contract, spent £430m over three transfer windows. He bade farewell to a host of the men who had conquered Europe, in Ederson and De Bruyne, Grealish and Gundogan, Kyle Walker and Manuel Akanji.
His last side was less of a Guardiola side: others topped the possession charts, City looked more for pace in transitions, he had a goalkeeper, in Gianluigi Donnarumma, who is better with his hands than with his feet. He even became the underdog at times. He won a fifth Carabao Cup – Nico O’Reilly, another player converted by Guardiola, with a double against Arsenal in the final – and a third FA Cup, with a goal by his penultimate signing, Antoine Semenyo, embarking on one last bid to sweep the board with more honours.
Yet at the time, there was the sense that football had moved on, into a post-Guardiola age, even as it was shaped by managers who learnt from him. The Club World Cup was won by one of his former assistants, Enzo Maresca; the Premier League and Champions League could go to another, in Arteta. If nothing else, it indicated the impact Guardiola made.
Go back a decade and United hired Jose Mourinho while City appointed the Catalan. Guardiola outlasted his old rival by seven-and-a-half years. He outlasted most of his defining players, a series of his assistants. He surprised City’s staff with his staying power, signing a new contract in troubled times in 2024. He showed a commitment to the cause.
He kept everyone guessing in his final season. Until, eventually, he brought down the curtain on an age of extraordinary success. He won his 20 pieces of silverware and the battle of ideas. But now a decade of dominance is ending.