Pep Guardiola: Man City will be my last job in club football
Pep Guardiola says club management is a lonely existence
The pressure is on Pep Guardiola like never before and the Manchester City manager has added to that by emphatically declaring he will not coach another club in his career.
If he holds true to that and if the latest contract he has signed is his last it means we are already into the final three years of Guardiola in the Premier League, Champions League or any other league.
“I’m not going to manage another team,” Guardiola said. “I’m not talking about the long-term future but what I’m not going to do is leave Man City, go to another country, and do the same thing as now.
“I wouldn’t have the energy... The thought of starting somewhere else, all the process of training and so on... No, no, no! Maybe a national team, but that’s different.”
Guardiola’s comments – in which he also talked about the “loneliness” of being a manager – came in an interview on the Desmontadito YouTube channel run by Dani Garcia, who is a Michelin-starred Spanish chef.
Guardiola shares a passion for food and made the comparison between his job and cooking. “I should stop, like these chefs that go to other countries, stop and see what we’ve done well and what we could do better and when you’re busy all day, day after day you don’t have time to do that,” he said.
Which leads into the obvious segue: has Guardiola got the ingredients right at present with City? A run of just one win in nine games in all competitions is simply extraordinary and, ahead of a now crucial Champions League tie away to Juventus, he also spoke about how his team is “punishing ourselves” with their mistakes and the need to do the “simple things better”.
Tellingly Guardiola added: “I don’t want to learn from such a situation. I would rather not be in this position.”
Pep Guardiola: Man City will be my last job in club football
Man City are having their worst run of form under Pep Guardiola
It is obviously a position he has never occupied before and while it has not influenced what he said about his future – rather it made him sign up for two more years at City, as opposed to planned one – it means there will not be another fresh start or another club. His immediate task is to restate City’s supremacy and then undertake an overhaul of the squad and the rebuilding of a new team. Probably his last team as a club manager.
And then what? Guardiola has already made it clear that he wants to coach a national team and the Football Association approached him about succeeding Gareth Southgate. But the timing was wrong and he was always more minded to sign a new deal at City.
There were two other offers from national teams this autumn and Guardiola has not hidden his fascination with Brazil and their iconic yellow shirt. After a sabbatical, when he eventually leaves City, he wants to take a nation to the World Cup, Copa América or European Championship.
Guardiola also gave an insight into the personal toll of his job and how exhausting it is to retain the intensity with which he works. “The starting point with coping with the problems of defeat would be being with people, your family basically,” he said.
“But no one can really console the loneliness of the football manager. You have people beside you but the bad decisions, why have I done that, it’s gone wrong because I did this, I didn’t push them enough….the pain of the defeat, you feel it alone.
“You might have friends around you, but when you close that bedroom door and turn off the light there’s no consolation. You have to let one or two days pass and then start again.”
City’s current run means he has been in a dark place although, in the interview, he also spoke about his love of golf – “one of best therapies I have” – and his intention to learn French and “cook simple things” when he does step away.
For now, though, he insists that he has the energy and resolve to turn City’s fortunes around. It is shared by Rúben Dias, with the Portuguese centre-half suggesting that more than the ‘treble’, more than winning four Premier Leagues in a row how City respond to the current crisis will be of utmost importance. “The one thing that defines a legacy is how you react to the most difficult times in your career,” he said.