The All Indian Football Federation (AIFF) has officially dismissed rumours that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola had applied for the role of head coach of India’s men\u2019s national football team. Both Guardiola and former Barcelona boss Xavi Hern\u00e1ndez were linked to the coaching position, with applications said to have arrived via email. However, the AIFF confirmed these were fraudulent.<\/p>\n
An official AIFF statement said: “The AIFF received an email furnishing the applications from Spanish coaches Pep Guardiola and Xavi Hern\u00e1ndez. The authenticity of their applications could not be confirmed, and it has since emerged that the email applications were not genuine.”<\/p>\n
Unlike Guardiola, who is under contract with Manchester City until 2027, Xavi has been without a coaching role since his dismissal from Barcelona in June 2024. His previous managerial experience with Al Sadd in Qatar could suggest openness to coaching opportunities outside Europe.<\/p>\n
While Guardiola is unlikely to take a role in India soon, he has spoken openly about ambitions in international football. In June, he told Reuters, “I would love to be in a World Cup, in a Euro, a Copa Am\u00e9rica. I have always thought about it. But it depends on many, many things. If it happens, it\u2019s fine. If it doesn\u2019t happen, it\u2019s more than fine as well.” His current focus remains on Manchester City, where despite a difficult season and a third-place league finish, he extended his contract in late 2024. The reigning champions also exited the recent Club World Cup at the last 16 stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AIFF confirms Pep Guardiola did not apply for India coaching role; Xavi applications also fake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238],"tags":[59,310],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","tag-featured","tag-pep-guardiola"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","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=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}