Carles Planchart left Manchester City at the end of last season, ending his long-time association with Pep Guardiola.
Planchart joined Guardiola’s backroom staff at Barcelona in 2007 and followed him to Bayern Munich and Manchester City.
The pair worked together for close to two decades. Planchart stepped down from his role as performance analyst at Manchester City.
Tuesday’s edition of [Sport](https://www.sport.es/) has a detailed interview with Guardiola’s former assistant. The interview focuses on how he met the Manchester City manager, their time at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and at the Etihad.
The newspaper asked the 59-year-old about his decision to leave the Premier League club.
Responding to that, he said: _“It was a quick decision. I felt it was no longer a project I had to be involved in in the future. I had one more year on my contract, and we made a decision with Pep and the club. It was a consensual decision.”_
Guardiola is in his 10th season at Manchester City and Sport point out he’s been able to work calmly at the Etihad.
_“What you see there is that the people at the club, the people around him, the fans, if they’re from a club, they’re from a club,”_ Planchart explained.
_“Surely there are people who disagree with some things, but when they go on the pitch, they’re from their team and they defend it to the death. I saw this many years ago when I visited Benítez at Liverpool. At City, we also had a family with Ferran Soriano and Txiki.”_
Sport immediately asked whether these are the reasons Guardiola wasn’t keen on returning to Barcelona.
_“It’s his decision, and he should be responsible, but I’m clear that this is why he’s been at City for so many years. They’ve treated us like family. They’ve let us work as if we were at home. He didn’t feel that way at Barca or Bayern,”_ he added.
Last November, Guardiola extended his contract with the Citizens until 2027. That didn’t stop Sport from asking Planchart whether this could be the manager’s final season at Manchester City.
_“It’s a personal decision he’ll have to make. I think a project should last five or six years, no more. But not for him, for everyone. Afterwards, you have to regenerate. As a friend, I would tell him to look for a new project because he still has a long way to go,”_ he said.