Pep Guardiola Says Goodbye to Manchester City

 Pep Guardiola has officially confirmed he is leaving Manchester City after 10 extraordinary years. Twenty trophies. Six league titles. One Champions League. Here is the full story of the greatest managerial reign in Premier League history.

The End of Something Truly Special

There are moments in football where you stop, look up from the screen, and feel the weight of what you are witnessing.

Friday morning was one of those moments.

Manchester City officially confirmed what had been quietly building for days — Pep Guardiola will step down as manager at the end of the 2025-26 season. His final game in charge arrives on Sunday, when City host Aston Villa at the Etihad Stadium in what will be his 425th and last match as manager of this club.

Ten years. Twenty trophies. One extraordinary, irreversible transformation of English football.

Guardiola departs having won 20 trophies as City boss, including six Premier League titles, three FA Cups, five League Cups, the Champions League, and the Club World Cup — making him, without any debate, the most successful manager in Manchester City’s entire history.

The era is ending. And the gap it leaves will take years to measure fully.

How the News Broke

On the eve of City’s 1-1 draw with Bournemouth — the result that handed Arsenal the Premier League title — widespread reports emerged suggesting Guardiola had decided to call time on his decade at City.

The timing felt poignant. The season had slipped away. Arsenal had been confirmed as champions in Bournemouth. And quietly, away from the spotlight, one of the most consequential decisions in recent football history had been made.

Guardiola has chosen to take advantage of a break clause in his contract — set to run until June 2027 — and leave a year early.

He did not need to go. He had another year available. He chose to leave anyway, on his own terms, at a time of his own choosing. That, too, feels entirely in character.

In His Own Words: Guardiola’s Farewell

Some farewells are formal and forgettable. Guardiola’s was neither.

Speaking at his official farewell press conference on Friday morning, the 55-year-old delivered a statement that captured everything about the man — his warmth, his depth of feeling, his connection to the city he has called home for a decade.

“When I arrived, my first interview was with Noel Gallagher. I walked out thinking — Okay, Noel is here? This will be fun. And what a time we have had together.”

He continued:

“Don’t ask me the reasons I’m leaving. There is no reason, but deep inside, 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.”

And then, in a passage that felt less like a press conference statement and more like a love letter to a city:

“This is a city built from work. From graft. You see it in the colour of the bricks. From people who clocked in early, stayed late. The factories. The Pankhursts. The unions. The music. Simply the Industrial Revolution and how it changed the world. And I think I grew to understand that — and my teams did too.”

Rarely does a departing football manager leave you wanting to read his words again. This one did.

At his press conference, Guardiola added, “It has been the experience of my life. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been 10 years. I can’t be more grateful for the amount of love and affection I’ve had for many, many years.”

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The Numbers That Define a Decade

You can talk about Guardiola in abstract terms — the genius, the visionary, the perfectionist — or you can simply let the numbers do the talking.

That is 20 major trophies across 10 seasons — an average of two trophies per year, every year, for an entire decade.

For context: in the 44 years before Guardiola arrived in 2016, Manchester City won a combined total of five major trophies. He won four times that number on his own.

The Spanish manager won 17 major trophies at City, including six league titles and one Champions League. By any metric — domestic, European, historical — there has never been a manager like him at this club.

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Year by Year: The Guardiola Era at a Glance

It helps to see the journey in full to appreciate just how relentless the success has been.

The 2022-23 Treble — Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League — stands apart from everything else. Becoming the first English club to win all three competitions in the same season, Guardiola delivered the moment that had eluded City throughout their entire history in one extraordinary campaign.

It was the summit. But it was not the end.

What Made Guardiola Different

Statistics and trophies tell part of the story. They do not tell all of it.

What separated Guardiola from every other manager of his generation was not just that his teams won — it was how they won, and what they demanded of the people watching them.

Football as Art

From the very first weeks of his time at the Etihad, it was clear that Guardiola was not simply trying to win matches. He was trying to create something. His teams played with a positional discipline and attacking fluency that had rarely been seen in English football — passes played in triangles before the ball was even won back, full-backs inverting into midfield positions, pressing triggers activated the moment a loose touch was made.

Watching City under Guardiola at their best — the 2017-18 side that lost only twice all season, or the Treble winners of 2022-23 — was to watch football operated at a level of collective precision that most clubs could only study, never replicate.

The Standards He Set

Players who arrived at City for big money quickly discovered that reputation meant nothing without effort and adaptability. Sergio Agüero, David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, and Bernardo Silva — all of them were elevated to heights they may never have reached under another manager.

Guardiola’s demand for total commitment — tactical, physical, mental — was relentless. But the results spoke for themselves, and the players who embraced his methods became, in many cases, the finest of their generation.

Respect From Rivals

Perhaps the most telling tribute to Guardiola’s legacy is that his fiercest rivals have consistently described him as the best manager in the world. Jürgen Klopp, Jose Mourinho, and Mikel Arteta — men who competed against him, occasionally defeated him, and consistently acknowledged that the standard he set made their own work better.

Arteta, of course, learned his trade under Guardiola as City’s assistant manager. The Arsenal boss who delivered the Premier League title this week — ending City’s run and their manager’s time at the club in the same breath — is partly the creation of the man he ultimately overtook.

That is a legacy within a legacy.

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City’s Tributes: A Stand, a Statue, and a Family Forever

Manchester City is not letting Guardiola simply walk away without marking the moment appropriately.

City will rename their North Stand to The Pep Guardiola Stand and have commissioned a statue of him to be built as a tribute.

A stand bearing his name and a statue outside the ground place Guardiola in the same permanent territory as the club’s all-time greats. For a club whose greatest historical figure had for years been Agüero — himself immortalised outside the Etihad — to add Guardiola’s name to the stadium’s physical fabric is a statement that needs no further explanation.

Despite his departure as manager, Guardiola will continue his relationship with the City Football Group, taking up a role as a Global Ambassador — giving technical advice to the clubs in the group and working on specific projects and collaborations.

He is not disappearing. He is simply stepping back from the dugout. The connection, as he put it, will be eternal.

Manchester City CEO Ferran Soriano said, “We have been privileged to work alongside Pep Guardiola for 10 years. We have witnessed his greatness and dedication, but also enjoyed his companionship, his friendship, and humanity. What a privilege it has been for so many of us at Manchester City.”

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Who Comes Next: Enzo Maresca

Every era ends, and a new one must begin.

According to BBC Sport, it is widely expected that former Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca is in line to replace Guardiola as Man City boss.

Maresca — who previously worked under Guardiola as his assistant at City before taking charge of Leicester City and then Chelsea — represents continuity in philosophy, if not in personality. He is a Guardiola disciple, trained in the positional principles and pressing structures that defined the Guardiola era.

Whether he can sustain City’s dominance, or whether the club will face a period of transition after such an extraordinary decade, remains the most compelling question in English football heading into 2026-27.

Guardiola himself said that a new face leading the club will be “really good for everyone.” A gracious, generous farewell — and perhaps a quiet acknowledgement that the time for change has genuinely arrived.

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Sunday: One Last Time at the Etihad

Before the tributes are fully paid, before the stand is renamed and the statue is unveiled, there is one more match.

On Sunday, May 24, Pep Guardiola will take his place in the Etihad dugout for the final time. Manchester City host Aston Villa — a side playing for their own final-day permutations — and 55,000 supporters will gather to say goodbye to the man who gave them the greatest decade in the club’s history.

The result almost certainly does not matter in terms of the Premier League title — Arsenal are already champions. But in every other sense, Sunday matters enormously.

It is a send-off. A thank you. A moment to look at a man in a dugout and understand that when he walks away from it for the last time, English football will be measurably different.

Arrive early. Stay late.

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Final Thoughts: What Guardiola Leaves Behind

When Pep Guardiola arrived at Manchester City in July 2016, English football was already highly competitive, deeply watched, and wildly entertaining. What it was not — not fully, not yet — was a place where the highest technical demands of the modern game had been completely met.

Guardiola changed that. He raised the standard for what a football team could look like, what a manager could demand, and what success on a consistent basis could feel like.

Twenty trophies. A city transformed. A generation of supporters who grew up knowing nothing else but this level of excellence.

“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.”

Thank you, Pep. For every title. Every night under the lights. Every moment of football that made people stop and watch more carefully.

It has been one of the greatest shows this sport has ever produced.