If Pep Guardiola knows he’s leaving Manchester City at the end of the season, he’s not telling.
High-level sources at the Etihad Stadium are well aware of the intense speculation that we could now be in the Guardiola end-game and that the 55-year-old is considering — if not yet fully committed to — ending his time as manager in the summer. But even they insist they don’t know for sure.
Sources close to SEG, the agency which works with Guardiola’s representatives — led by his brother, Pere — say that anything to do with the Catalan coach’s future is heavily protected and that this is no different. There is, though, a whirl of rumour — mostly generated by chatter between rival executives, agents and players — that he’s close to calling time.
Guardiola still has 16 months left to run on the contract he signed in November 2024. But it has already reached the stage where it would surprise nobody at City if he decided to end the agreement a year early in the summer of 2026.
The contract situation
There have been few things over the last nine-and-a-half years that have annoyed Guardiola more than questions about his future. As someone who is obsessed with the process behind winning football matches, he views any kind of outside noise as a potential distraction.
Often Guardiola has tried to see it off early, signing extensions by November of his final year to ensure the second half of the season isn’t overshadowed by uncertainty. But when he signed his latest deal in November 2024, there was surprise at City that it was for two years rather than one.
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There was a feeling at the time that Guardiola might sign a 12-month extension to take him to the summer of 2026 and round off 10 years at the club. That it ended up being a contract until 2027 caught a few people at the Etihad off guard; it also raised the question about whether the extra year was a buffer intended to offer at least the sense of certainty.
Asked about his future in early January, Guardiola was able to hide behind it.
“I have a contract,” he said. “I said a thousand million times. It’s 10 years here. I will leave one day, but I have a contract.”
He did the same again when asked a similar question at his news conference on Friday.
“I have one more year on my contract,” he said. “The question of that is [the same as] one or two months ago, but I will tell you again that it is the same answer.”
A change in mood
While there has always been a feeling that Guardiola could quit in the summer of 2026 — 10 years on from his arrival from Bayern Munich in 2016 — it has been strengthened by an apparent change in mood over the past few weeks.
It started after the Carabao Cup semifinal first leg at Newcastle when an Antoine Semenyo goal ruled out by VAR sent Guardiola into a tailspin on the state of refereeing. He never likes to criticise officials after draws or defeats, but following the 2-0 win at St James’ Park, he felt comfortable highlighting perceived errors in the league defeat at Newcastle six weeks earlier — not only that, but also the decision not to show a red card to goalkeeper Dean Henderson during the FA Cup final defeat to Crystal Palace all the way back in May.
Guardiola had another pop at referees after the 2-0 win over Wolves and ahead of the second leg against Newcastle he — largely unprompted — decided to speak out on a range of topics including the transfer spending of Premier League rivals, Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.
He’s also started saying things like “nice quote, eh?” when he knows he’s made a headline, as well as addressing reporters by name and unexpectedly taking extra questions at the end of news conferences when City’s media staff are trying to wrap it up. If he’s conscious that he might only have this platform for a few more months, then he’s making the most of it.
Guardiola’s war of refs has similarities with the way Sir Alex Ferguson reacted to Nani’s red card against Real Madrid in 2013, which contributed to Manchester United’s exit from the Champions League. Ferguson was said to be “distraught” after the game and even refused to do his post-match news conference. It became apparent afterwards that he was so upset because he had already decided to leave Old Trafford at the end of the season and that he had been denied a last chance to win the Champions League by what he believed was a refereeing mistake.
Despite approaching 20 years as a manager and a decade at City, Guardiola has not lost the love of winning. His celebrations on the touchline on Wednesday, as City booked their place in a fifth Carabao Cup final of his reign, looked like those of a rookie manager chasing his first piece of silverware.
“I’m getting old and I have the feeling that reaching finals is more difficult,” he said. “I don’t want to take it for granted and I know how difficult it is.
“I’m going to live with the joy that we are going to play another final because it’s so difficult in modern sport and competition — tennis, golf, basketball — to reach finals and win trophies. You have to sweat a lot.”
City’s forward planning
City have always been relaxed about Guardiola’s future. Quite obviously, they want their most successful ever manager to stay for as long as possible, but they always knew he wasn’t the type to follow Ferguson or Arsene Wenger and do 20-plus years.
They’ve often found comfort in the strength of their relationship with Guardiola. It has meant that club executives are confident that, whenever the day comes, he will give them enough time to properly recruit a successor.
It was noteworthy that during the collapse in relations between Enzo Maresca and Chelsea in December and January that Chelsea sources were happy to drop in that Maresca — a former member of Guardiola’s backroom staff — had been talking to City. The claims from Stamford Bridge were noted by City, but — crucially — not formally denied.
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Usually, uncertainty over the manager would cause problems for a club in the transfer market, as one of the first things a player will want to know is who will be in charge. But those questions didn’t prevent City from signing Semenyo and Marc Guéhi in January and the club were keen to share it. The view internally was that two top Premier League players at the peak of their careers had chosen to move to the Etihad in the face of interest from almost every other big club in Europe despite the possibility of Guardiola leaving.
Working with Guardiola has often been the big attraction for new signings, and it was a noticeable change in message.
So … is it happening?
City know it’s coming sooner rather than later. Club bosses pride themselves on having a plan for everything and there is the same feeling this time.
If Guardiola calls time at the end of the season, City believe they’ll be prepared. They’ve dealt with the loss of director of football Txiki Begiristain, COO Omar Berrada and director of football transactions Rafi Moersen in the recent past, as well as a host of key players.
Moving on from Guardiola will be much harder, but according to well-placed sources, it won’t be impossible. That, though, remains to be seen: after all, Manchester United are still reeling from the loss of their own iconic manager 13 years ago.
City are more comfortable with the timing of a potential departure this summer as opposed to 12 months ago. The view was that trying to install a new manager in a summer which was already complicated by the FIFA Club World Cup would have been too much.
Guardiola has said in the past that he’s not a great deliberator. He makes decisions quickly on instinct and feeling, and it’s possible that he could yet be swayed by results between now and the end of the season — good or bad.
For now, though, he’s keeping quiet. But it means the swirl of speculation will continue until that changes.