Manchester City are coming off the back of an underwhelming campaign but Pep Guardiola is raring to go again in 2025/26.
Pep Guardiola of Manchester City after his side's 1-0 defeat
Pep Guardiola wants to get City back to winning ways, with another Champions League a major target
Pep Guardiola wants to get Manchester City back to their trophy-winning best next season, not to prove the doubters wrong but to prove to himself that he can still do it.
City won the Community Shield this season but otherwise came away empty-handed from the campaign, although they salvaged third in the Premier League and qualification from the Champions League when even that looked to be in doubt at one point.
Guardiola talked up that achievement after a difficult year, but is focusing on returning to winning ways. City begin their Club World Cup campaign in just under two weeks, and the 54-year-old wants to get that taste of success back, to show he still has what it takes as much as anything.
“It’s to prove myself that I can do it; I don’t want to have those feelings that last season left,” he said. “Because when we win, the wine tastes better afterwards, you sleep better. I don’t know a manager who loses games and sleeps like a baby. It doesn’t happen. You’ve got to worry. That’s part of our life.”
Guardiola has put another Champions League triumph with City at the top of his "to-do" list and joked that he was pleased to see Carlo Ancelotti depart Real Madrid for the Brazil job, given the pain Ancelotti and Real have inflicted on the Blues in Europe's premier club competition.
“I’m so happy for him,” Guardiola said. “But I’m so happy that he’s not in Madrid any more because all the time he beats me — that I don’t have to handle it any more.”
Guardiola has win six league titles with City, including an unprecedented four in a row, as as well six domestic cups, but 2023 is the only time the club have been crowned champions of Europe.
“I won 12 domestic leagues in 16 years. It’s not bad, I would say. But you cannot win all the time. I cannot win the Champions League all the time,” he said.
“Michael Jordan, the best athlete I’ve ever seen in my life, won six NBA championships in 15 years. Tiger Woods, one incredible golf player, Jack Nicklaus, I don’t know how many he has. But they lost more Grand Slams than they won. It happens.”
Guardiola has another two years left on his City contract and is hungry to bring trophies back to the Etihad, but he has again expressed a desire to manage in an international tournament, although it is not an ambition that will make or break an illustrious career.
“I would love to be in a World Cup, in a Euro, a Copa America,” Guardiola said. “I have always thought about it. But it depends on many, many things. If it happens, it’s fine. If it doesn’t happen, it’s more than fine as well.”
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