Is Pep Guardiola leaving Manchester City? Record-breaking manager enters potential final week originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
A week from now, it could all be over. After a transformative and record-breaking decade in English football, Pep Guardiola might have managed a Manchester City match for the last time.
Guardiola's contract at the Etihad Stadium runs until the end of June 2027, but there is mounting speculation that he will walk away at the end of his 10th season with 20 trophies to his name. Perhaps 21, in the unlikely event of an Arsenal stumble and City pipping them at the last in the Premier League.
To have any realistic chance of that, City must win at Champions League-chasing Bournemouth on Tuesday and do likewise at home to Aston Villa, on what might be an emotionally charged final day at the Etihad Stadium.
The 55-year-old has decided to have some fun with the uncertainty surrounding his position over recent weeks. His press conferences have become looser, a man getting whatever he fancies off his chest. They've been both intentionally and unintentionally funny beyond his usual weapons-grade sarcasm. Reporters' questions, certainly during the embargoed sections to ensure fresh quotes for UK newspapers, have featured plenty of widescreen enquiries inviting Guardiola to assess his time at City as a whole and wider themes of the game.
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He's always engaging when talking about these things; the long, tangent-exploring answers offer journalistic rewards. But there's definitely been a hope he might slip up and give the game away, or at the very least supply a solid clue. Guardiola isn't daft and knows full well what game is being played. At the end of his embargo section before the 1-0 FA Cup final win over Chelsea, he was asked about his history of trophy-winning in England. In a follow-up question, the reporter cheekily asked if he was sad about his pending last trip to Wembley.
What has Pep Guardiola said about leaving Man City?
"No way, no way. I have one more year contract," Guardiola replied — a response that buoyed City fans when they read the written quotes, but one that invited a very different conclusion when viewing the footage of his high-camp delivery of "contraaact" and quick jump out of his chair. Guardiola then seemed to overplay his hand by bouncing straight into a BBC interview for the broadcaster's FA Cup final coverage and answering explicitly that he would stay next season, before trying to walk his answer back.
There was more tomfoolery, not quite as clever as Antoine Semenyo's winning goal, after the cup final. Asked by TNT Sport presenter Laura Woods about rumours he was leaving, Guardiola replied, with mock alarm: "What rumours? Have a lovely evening." Then he was off to his post-match press conference and another embargo section, where he was more reflective and not playing for laughs.
"Trophies are good, [because of] how you have to compete, what you experience and many, many other things. But don't take it for granted," he said. "If you start to believe you are special… we've just won the FA Cup. Special? You are not. The moment you think that, we will not be in these places so often. That is one of the things I think everyone over the years we were okay at doing, knowing exactly how difficult it is just to arrive [in finals] and after, win."
Bernardo Silva, Guardiola's great midfield schemer and his eyes and ears on the field, is definitely leaving at the end of the season. He joined City in the summer of 2017, following Guardiola's trophyless first campaign in Manchester. Silva has been there for all 20 pieces of silverware. He is eighth on City's all-time appearance list with 458 and averages a trophy every 23 games. The Portugal international spoke at Wembley about a new-look City team having a "taste" for trophies after the club's poor 2024/25.
Guardiola seems to dwell on last season, when a run of one win in 13 games amid a winter injury crisis decimated City's campaign before they recovered to secure Champions League qualification on the final day, far more than he does all of those successes. It's the great warning that gives meaning to all the glory.
"Why should we be complacent? Last season, we dropped massively, had injuries and I didn't make a click," he said "I could have been more calm and should have been more present with that. There are minimum standards that we require."
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City still managed to reach last season's FA Cup final, where they suffered a 1-0 defeat to Crystal Palace. Across FA Cup semifinals and finals, Carabao Cup finals and Community Shields, Guardiola has led City in 24 games at Wembley, a venue he has long been fond of since his Champions League wins there with Barcelona as both a player and coach. Both now years and years ago.
"Last season happened. In 10 years, many things can happen," Guardiola said. "The rest, always we have been there. I think the biggest title is to come here 24 times. We can win Premier Leagues, the Champions League… If you have been 24 times here, [it is] because we were stubborn.
"I said many times: FA Cups, Carabao Cups, you go [to play teams from] League One, League Two. You can make a bad effort. Never has it happened, never. Not even one day. We behaved. And that is the biggest compliment we can get as a club. In the future, you can see we have done it, and we have to continue to try. That is the biggest success, by far — more than six Premier Leagues in nine years, a Champions League [that we previously] never had."
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Monologues like that have prompted competing thoughts over recent weeks. How on Earth can a man so clearly addicted to his job and his sport, with all its quirks, peculiarities and pressures, possibly walk away? He has set this new Manchester City of Semenyo, Rayan Cherki, Abdukodir Khusanov, Jeremy Doku and Nico O'Reilly onto their first cycle. They'll be better next year and would be better with him. Enzo Maresca, Guardiola's former assistant who is assumed to be waiting in the wings, would relish getting his hands on them. Any coach would.
On the other hand, would it not just be nice to sit back and, finally, enjoy it? You don't have to fear complacency when it's done. You don't have to think of the next one and the next one and the next one. Few figures in football history can match Guardiola's insatiable competitive drive, but even he must have a limit. Maybe it's best to leave before it expires. He'd loathe being a man chasing former glories that lurch further out of reach, as so many greats eventually do.
City will parade the latest fruits of his labours on an open-top bus parade in Manchester on May 25. The club's triumphant women's and youth teams will take part, too, hoisting the WSL trophy and FA Youth Cup respectively. Then it's on to Co-op Live, the new arena adjacent to the Etihad Stadium, for a party with fans.
Guardiola's farewell party? This time next week, we'll know for sure.
