Manchester City are bracing for the end of an era, with Pep Guardiola expected to leave the Etihad Stadium at the conclusion of the 2025-26 season after ten years and 17 major trophies in charge. Sources close to the Catalan, who turned 55 in January, indicate the manager has informed senior figures at the club that he intends to step away from day-to-day management when his current contract expires next summer, bringing the most decorated chapter in City’s history to a close.
The 54-year-old’s likely departure has accelerated succession planning at boardroom level, with chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak and director of football Hugo Viana already drawing up a shortlist of candidates. Guardiola signed a two-year extension in November 2024 that always carried the understanding it would be his last on the touchline at the Etihad, and recent conversations with the club’s hierarchy have effectively confirmed that timeline.
A decade that redefined English football
Since arriving from Bayern Munich in July 2016, Guardiola has reshaped Manchester City and the Premier League in equal measure. His trophy haul reads as a roll call of modern dominance: six Premier League titles, including an unprecedented four in a row between 2020-21 and 2023-24, two FA Cups, four League Cups, the 2022-23 Champions League, the UEFA Super Cup, the FIFA Club World Cup and four Community Shields. Only Sir Alex Ferguson has won more league titles with a single English club.
The Treble of 2022-23 stands as his crowning achievement at City, the club becoming only the second English side after Manchester United in 1999 to win the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League in the same campaign. Rodri’s 68th-minute strike against Inter Milan in Istanbul finally delivered the European trophy that had eluded the Abu Dhabi-backed project for more than a decade. Guardiola’s overall record at City stands at 489 wins from 642 matches across all competitions, a win rate of 76.2 percent unmatched by any manager in the club’s 132-year history.
His influence has stretched beyond silverware. The positional play, inverted full-backs and possession-based pressing that Guardiola imported from Barcelona and refined in Munich are now standard reference points across the English game. Mikel Arteta at Arsenal, Enzo Maresca at Chelsea and Vincent Kompany at Bayern Munich are all former pupils now running elite operations of their own.
The current campaign and a softer landing
This season has carried the unmistakable air of a long goodbye. City sit third in the Premier League, eight points behind leaders Arsenal after 33 matches, having already been eliminated from the Champions League by Real Madrid in the round of 16 and from the FA Cup at the quarter-final stage by Crystal Palace. The 4-1 February defeat at Anfield to Liverpool was the heaviest league loss of Guardiola’s City tenure.
The summer rebuild that brought Omar Marmoush, Abdukodir Khusanov, Vitor Reis and Nico Gonzalez for a combined £180 million has produced mixed returns, while the prolonged absence of Rodri for the second consecutive season has exposed structural fragility in midfield. Guardiola has spoken repeatedly in recent press conferences about feeling “tired” and acknowledged in March that “after 10 years, the body and the mind ask for something different.”
What comes next at the Etihad
City’s succession planning is understood to be focused on three principal candidates:
- Xabi Alonso, the Real Madrid head coach who delivered Bayer Leverkusen’s first Bundesliga title in 2023-24 before moving to the Bernabeu last summer
- Roberto De Zerbi, currently at Marseille and a long-standing admirer of Guardiola’s methods
- Thiago Motta, who is out of work after his Juventus dismissal in March and has been profiled internally by Viana
Guardiola himself is expected to take a sabbatical before deciding his next move, with international management increasingly likely. Both the Brazilian Football Confederation and the English Football Association have been linked, the latter should Thomas Tuchel’s tenure conclude after the 2026 World Cup. Guardiola has said publicly he would consider a national team role “when the right moment comes.”
For City, the challenge is twofold: replacing a generational coach without dismantling the playing identity he embedded, and managing the contractual futures of Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan, all of whom are believed to have informal understandings linking their own futures to Guardiola’s. The post-Pep era at the Etihad begins in earnest the moment the final whistle blows on May 24.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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