The crowning of Manchester City as European champions and treble winners may cause Pep Guardiola to ask himself, again, a familiar question: how much longer can he manage his gilded side?
One answer is found in the irresistible quality of the 2022‑23 Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup victors. The team that Guardiola built is so dominant and, seemingly, so unstoppable that it is a natural fount of the energy and drive required to rejuvenate the Catalan for the foreseeable future.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, after receiving rippling applause in the Ataturk Stadium’s media room following Inter Milan’s 1-0 defeat, Guardiola was an intriguing blend of exhaustion and defiance.
“Don’t ask me about next season,” Guardiola said before, later, insisting that “knowing me” there will be no falling away when the defence of the titles begins in August. By then the Community Shield may have been added, the European Super Cup final versus Sevilla in Athens will be four days away, and Guardiola’s eye will be on the Club World Cup in December as this trophy-addict tilts at a clean sweep of honours.
Yet, when Guardiola’s tenure might reach its endgame is a poser he has tossed about more than once during his seven-year reign. At the start of the season which has just ended, 12 months remained on his terms, and there was surprise from confidantes when he signed a fresh two-year deal during the World Cup. On taking over in summer 2016 there was the same sense of a perfectionist coach who would be hired for a finite time – then, for first, a three-year contract.
This, remember, was the man who had just completed the same three-year span in charge of Bayern Munich, preceded by a 12-month sabbatical, and whose four seasons at Barcelona (2008-12) ended in resignation, and Guardiola citing how that stint at that “kind of club” felt an “eternity”. Under him, City are now that kind of club, too. One in the elite rank that is favourite for every competition they enter, which brings a particular pressure.
From a certain angle, the triumph on Saturday can be viewed as the natural finishing line to all Guardiola has worked towards since striding on to the Etihad campus; and, too, what he was hired to do. For years there were denials that the chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, his sporting director, Txiki Begiristain, and chief executive, Ferran Soriano, had ever ordered Guardiola to bring the European Cup to east Manchester.
In recent weeks the stance altered: he began speaking of City being a “big club” only if the continent’s premier team trophy was claimed. In part that may have been the ever-shrewd coach calculating that his players needed to hear this as motivation because, after losing the 2021 Champions League final against Chelsea when they capitulated in Porto, he would forget playing down the tournament’s import, and instead talk up the absolute need to be the continent’s number one club.
It worked: City’s first European Cup and Guardiola’s third as a manager ensured the treble as the team from the town’s blue zone joined the one from the red – Alex Ferguson’s 1999 Manchester United vintage – as immortals, and sealed Guardiola’s status as an all-time great (if not already secured).
What else, then, is there to achieve at City? Again, the word is that eyebrows will be raised if Guardiola stays on beyond the next two seasons, as he will then have piloted the side for nine years. Departing in summer 2025 would also make impossible any tilt at a challenge that might keep Guardiola’s uber-competitive juices flowing: overtaking Ferguson’s remarkable record at United of 13 Premier Leagues, five FA Cups, four League Cups, two European Cups, one European Cup-Winners’ Cup, one European Super Cup, one Intercontinental Cup and one Fifa Club World Cup. Guardiola’s City honours roll stands at five Premier Leagues, one European Cup, two FA Cups and four League Cups.
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Claim the European Super Cup and Fifa Club World Cup and Ferguson’s tally in these is equalled, which Guardiola has already done in the League Cup. He now has half as many European Cups (at City) as Ferguson, is three behind in FA Cups, and eight in the Premier League.
Yet, by one metric Guardiola is ahead of what Ferguson achieved in more than 26 years at United: trophies per‑season. Disregarding Charity/Community shields, Ferguson’s count ended on 28, for a ratio of 1.05 a season, while Guardiola’s 12 have come at 1.74, so if he continues the Scot would be eclipsed in about a decade.
Might this tempt him? Ten years is an age in elite management, yet Guardiola will be only 62 in 2033, 12 months younger than Carlo Ancelotti is now, and as the 11 that sealed Champions League glory hardly teems with gnarled veterans he may have to construct only one more great team to outstrip Ferguson. And there is another reason why he may be drawn, yet again, to extend his tenure.
At 52 and in his prime, where else would he go? Coaching in Italy remains a target but could he really again enjoy what he does now – at a Serie A side, or elsewhere? Because as much as the all‑conquering City is the team that Pep built, in this golden second phase of Sheikh Mansour’s ownership, in which Soriano and Begiristain were headhunted to give him the best possible chance of success, this is the club configured for the man from Santpedor.
