SOCCER:PEP GUARDIOLA will leave Barcelona at the end of the season but he has no intention of joining another team, ending speculation over a move to Chelsea or even to the England national side.

The Barcelona coach, who will remain in charge until after the Copa del Rey final on May 25th, when he will be replaced by his assistant, Tito Vilanova, denied having spoken to Roman Abramovich about taking over at Stamford Bridge.

He will instead take a break from the game but did not rule out the possibility of coaching elsewhere in the future.

Guardiola announced his departure at a press conference at the Camp Nou on Friday afternoon. He insisted that the decision, which he first took in the late autumn, was motivated by the need to ease pressure on him and is not a prelude to taking another coaching job.

“Four years is an eternity at Barcelona,” said Guardiola. “I am the coach who has the third most number of games in the history of the club – that tells you how difficult it is here.

“Time wears everything down. I could not go on. Coming here day after day, over and over again, wears you out. A coach needs energy to be at his best and the only way to get that back is to take a break and distance myself [from here]. I needed to get away from it all.

“Sooner or later, I might coach again, but I don’t know when,” the 41-year-old continued. “At the moment I am interested in other things: there is more beyond football. Life will take me where it takes me.”

Asked if he had spoken to Abramovich in Paris in late February, as had been reported in the Spanish media, Guardiola responded: “No. That would have been a lack of respect to the club.”

Guardiola began the press conference by saying: “I want people to know that this is not easy for me,” before going on to explain that the decision had been taken in the autumn.

“Between the end of October and the start of December I told the sporting director and the president that I thought my time at the club was very close to its end. But I could not tell the players at the time because we still had to compete. It would have been a mess if I had done.”

He added: “I reached a point where I could have carried on as a coach but not in the way that a Barcelona coach should. I feel profoundly sorry, from the very deepest part of me, that I no longer have that energy that I once did. I have too much consideration for my players to carry on without that enthusiasm. I am so grateful to them: it has been a privilege to train them. They have turned ideas into reality on the pitch many times and there is no greater joy for a coach than that.”

Abramovich has long admired Guardiola’s achievements with Barcelona, as well as the style in which his team has swept all before them during most of his four-year tenure in Catalonia. Indeed, having sacked André Villas-Boas in the first week of March and with the Barça manager having yet to pronounce upon his future at that point, there was a hope within the London club’s hierarchy that Guardiola might move to Chelsea this summer.

Those aspirations were quickly rendered optimistic at best given his clear desire to enjoy a period away from the game.

Abramovich could yet revisit his potential appointment in the future, though Chelsea can now eliminate the two-times European Cup winner from their list of candidates to succeed Villas-Boas on a permanent basis at the end of this season.

The issue of the next appointment will only formally be addressed in the summer once it is clear whether Chelsea have qualified to compete in next year’s Champions League, with the credentials of managers such as Laurent Blanc and Athletic Bilbao’s Marcelo Bielsa to be scrutinised.