“Come here guys, come here,” shouts Pep Guardiola as the Manchester City players gather in the dressing room of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. It’s 0-0 at half-time, the Premier League title is slipping away and the energy levels are frail, bordering dead.
Kevin De Bruyne dabs sweat from his brow. Erling Haaland urges his teammates to keep going. An unseen staff member asks whether anyone is still in the toilets. It feels somehow fitting that this question does not come from Guardiola. Great orators should not have to corral their audience out of the can in advance.
And Guardiola really is a great orator: at least the equal of Jürgen Klopp or José Mourinho or John Sitton or any of the other great managerial talkers. Perhaps this part gets overlooked a little when you are also one of the great tactical minds of your generation. But what Guardiola instinctively gets – and why his words so rarely transcribe into great written copy – is that football oratory is essentially a kind of short-form theatre, a full-body performance, a vessel into which the entire soul must be poured.
Guardiola puts on an affected camp voice. “Eh, let’s go, let’s go,” he says, clapping weakly, mocking his team’s lack of intensity at the start of the game. Suddenly a hand comes crashing down on to the table of energy drinks. “My words don’t work if you don’t believe it inside!” he thunders, arms whirling like swords. “Now is the moment you have to prove how incredible you are! You cannot go home regretting! We CANNOT GO HOME!”
The latest Manchester City documentary – the inauspiciously titled 4-In-A-Row – was released this week, and as with its predecessors a common theme emerges. For most of the production, as City maintain their graceful ascent towards a fourth consecutive Premier League title, Guardiola is a restrained, thoughtful presence, drawling little nuggets of wisdom in that characteristic low voice of his, like a repentant ex-smoker.
But in the tougher moments, something primal seems to stir. Adversity brings an animal charisma out of him. The eyes burn wild, the background noise stills to a deathly hush. “In the fucking 18-yard box, you don’t touch the opponent!” he raves after a late penalty earns Crystal Palace a 2-2 draw at the Etihad Stadium. “It’s unacceptable, Phil Foden, unacceptable!”
And so, on reflection, perhaps we should not be so surprised that Guardiola has chosen this juncture to announce the renewal of his City contract for another two years. Four defeats in a row, Liverpool romping clear at the top of the table, a legal battle with the Premier League that threatens to bring an entire golden era crashing down. What better time for a dramatic and unequivocal show of strength? Punch Guardiola in the face right now and he would probably sign on for a third year.
As for the decision itself – stay or go – this was probably a more prosaic call. There is always a temptation to interpret everything Guardiola does as a kind of 4D mind game, but this is one of those situations where the simplest explanation is probably the most appropriate. This is a man who just quite likes his job. He gets to work with brilliant footballers. He gets plenty of money to spend. Manchester is a great city. The club is pretty much built around his needs. He knows everyone there. He is 53 and seemingly in decent health. This doesn’t have to be hard.
Besides, it’s worth considering the other side of the deal: where exactly might Guardiola go that would not, on some level, feel like a step backwards? There are only a handful of clubs in the world that could afford his salary, only a handful of clubs that could compete for the sort of trophies that would interest him and an even smaller handful of clubs that could do both. Given his emotional ties, we can safely rule out Real Madrid, Liverpool and Manchester United. Barcelona and Bayern Munich he has done. Who’s left? Given the absence of alternatives, perhaps it is no wonder the Football Association fleetingly believed it was in with a chance.
In the short term at least, the upshot will probably be negligible. There has been some talk of Guardiola’s decision potentially focusing minds, but in truth his departure would probably have had the same effect. City are still fighting on four fronts – the league, the FA Cup, the Champions League and the courts – and will expect to triumph in all of them. Very little has changed in that regard.
But when it comes to Guardiola himself, something important has changed here. The new contract takes him to 2027, at which point he will be 56 with two decades of management under his belt. By which point even the greatest coaches are no longer really innovating but simply plugging away, no longer building their legacy but simply maintaining it, protecting it against the twin devils of time and obsolescence.
Arsène Wenger and Bill Shankly were 46 when they took on the last coaching job of their careers. Alex Ferguson was 44. May Guardiola have taken his last job at the age of 45? Doubtless when he finally leaves City there will be no shortage of fresh projects to tempt him. But this – right here – was probably his last opportunity to craft something genuinely new.
So what remains for him at City? Everything that can be won has been won. All the available feelings have been felt. It’s a pure numbers game now: one more lap of honour, one more cigar on the open-top bus, one more title, and then another, and then another, until the flames of triumph blot out the sky, until all his foes fall silent.
It is an enduring paradox of the modern City that the more dominant they become, the angrier they get. The craving for trophies and the craving for adversity becomes a self-nourishing cycle, neither quite satisfying the other. Liverpool, Arsenal, Uefa, the Premier League, the media machine, the corrupt cartel, financial regulation, the rule of law itself. We are entering Guardiola’s siege phase, if it hasn’t already begun. And whether it succeeds or whether it fails, it’s not going to want for enemies.
