Deep into his 10th season as Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola has publicly resisted talk of an imminent departure while preparing his side for the closing stages of the campaign. City have already secured the Carabao Cup at the expense of Arsenal and still face an FA Cup final, milestones that have framed much of the recent speculation.<\/p>\n
Guardiola sought to deflect questions about his future by pointing to the environment around him. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be 10 years [here]\u2014even with good titles\u2014if I didn\u2019t have this incredible environment,\u201d Guardiola gushed at the start of May. \u201cI still have incredible energy, still I\u2019m so good, coming here to work on my days off.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course we\u2019re here because we won a lot\u2014and that\u2019s why they don\u2019t fire you, because they continue to trust you\u2014but apart from that, the club is really, really extraordinary. The people take care of all of us in all details. The little details mean my job as a manager and the players, is to just think about what you have to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a bubble that makes people feel good. It\u2019s a big club, but here it is a family.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the contractual question, Guardiola reiterated a straightforward position. \u201cI have a contract,\u201d the Catalan coach sighed when quizzed on the subject once again in January. \u201cI said a thousand million times. It\u2019s 10 years here. I will leave one day, but I have a contract.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club structure that helped persuade Guardiola to arrive in 2016 is part of the backstory. Ferran Soriano was installed as a City executive in 2012, and one month later he hired Guardiola\u2019s former Barcelona teammate Txiki Begiristain as sporting director, laying groundwork for the appointment.<\/p>\n
Guardiola has also pointed to testimony from former players, citing Aymeric Laporte: \u201cCity is the best club in the world and you never realize how good they are, how incredibly organized, until you leave.\u201d He recalled Ilkay G\u00fcndogan returning from Barcelona and calling Manchester City \u201ctop-top.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the coach\u2019s public tone and an on-paper commitment, outlets including ESPN have reported that a change of mind after the season would not surprise many. Should Guardiola deliver a domestic treble, few would begrudge the 55-year-old departing at the peak of a transformational decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola says he still boasts “incredible energy” and will honour his contract as City chase titles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13619,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,172],"tags":[1066],"class_list":["post-13620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-carabao-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}