‘You must have had a boss who has to know everything and control everything that you do,’ one prominent football agent told Daily Mail Sport during a conversation about Pep Guardiola’s reign.
‘Pep is that boss. Players gradually realise why this is when they realise he has corrected their problems. It makes them better. It makes the team better.’
There was some irony to this statement, given the player the agent represented once privately used a word pertaining to male genitalia to describe his manager, when a place on the bench had become significantly more familiar than one in the team. Like most of Guardiola’s players, though, he eventually learned what all that was actually about. The penny dropped in terms of what was required to change his own fortunes.
Indeed, it is striking how much introspection goes on in the minds of those who are around Guardiola for an extended period of time. The City manager makes footballers think and that can be more difficult than it sounds. Life can be a little upside down and back to front under the City manager. It’s not for everyone. Some don’t last. They can’t all be Bernardo Silva and John Stones.
But those who can handle the demands and the intensity and the drip of constant pressure become used to the dressing downs when results are going well and they appreciate the softer approach when performances dip. They know the tricks and yet the tricks still work.
‘He does stuff to keep us awake,’ says his captain Silva. ‘He does it on purpose.’
It is striking how much introspection goes on in the minds of those who are around Pep Guardiola for an extended period of time
‘You must have had a boss who has to know everything and control everything that you do,’ one prominent football agent told us during a conversation about Guardiola’s reign
A night in the French capital five years ago stands out as an example of Guardiola intuition. Away at Paris Saint-Germain in a 2021 Champions League semi-final first leg, with City a goal down at half-time, Guardiola launched into one of the most awe-inspiring team talks, centred on players believing in themselves and in their spirit. He told them to forget tactics and perform from the heart and with soul. They won 2-1.
Compare to this to another night in Europe, away at Sporting Lisbon in 2022, when he used half-time to berate the players for not wanting the ball. City were 4-0 up.
Closer to home, the dressing room at the Emirates Stadium in March 2018 witnessed Guardiola nailing his team after beating Arsenal 3-0 and scoring one of the great team goals – a symphony of movement and synergy eventually finished off by Leroy Sane. Conscious that Chelsea were due at the Etihad three days later, he accused his players of easing off and having their eyes on other things.
That first league title was duly wrapped up a month later and with five games to spare. It was celebrated hard, too, Vincent Kompany’s speech to a pub full of punters in the Railway in leafy Hale becoming the stuff of mobile phone footage legend.
But the truth is that even Kompany had been required to bend to Guardiola’s whim in order to survive and thrive. Nobody wins under Guardiola by standing still and almost two years before that singalong in Cheshire, Kompany had seen how the wind was blowing with his new manager.
The City captain, who now has a statue outside the Etihad, pretty much ran the club under Manuel Pellegrini. Kompany had organised everything, right down to Christmas presents for staff, but soon realised that would have to change. Guardiola was not just a coach but a true leader of the building.
So Kompany stepped back somewhat and on the Tuesday after those raucous celebrations in the millionaires’ corner of Manchester, he saw exactly what that leadership looked like. At the training ground, Guardiola delivered one of those ‘I was there’ moments to tell his players he did not like what he had seen. It was a deliberate bump back down to earth, telling them that anybody can win one league.
‘Leicester won the league once,’ was the gist of it. ‘But great players create a legacy.’
Away at Paris Saint-Germain in a 2021 Champions League semi-final first leg, with City a goal down at half-time, Guardiola launched into an awe-inspiring team talk. They won 2-1
He even lashed out at his players for not wanting the ball enough when they were 4-0 up at half-time in a match at Sporting Lisbon
The next day, printouts of all the records they could still break were stuck to the walls. ‘Guys, don’t think it is holidays now,’ urged Guardiola. ‘We have these records, I want to achieve these. If you want to go on holiday, there is the door. That is fine. This applies to players and staff.’
It was a typical high-tariff Guardiola moment. Such counter-intuitive methods always come with risk attached. But perhaps the timing was crucial. For the first time in his two seasons at the club, Guardiola had tangible credit in the bank. He had his first Premier League crown, so it was time to begin stage two of the evolution.
One source tells us now: ‘People were looking at each other going, “What’s going on here? Is this real? Is he winding us up?”. He was really serious. For one week he was grumpy. But that week he essentially won the dressing room over. All players and staff will remember it.’
In terms of it being a line in the sand moment – a staging post for what City would become – many others agree. Another staff member says it ‘set the tone for the next 10 years’ and the short-term impact was profound, too. City – doubtless emboldened by their manager’s messaging – won four and drew one of five subsequent dead rubber games to become the first and only club to reach 100 points in a top-flight season weeks later.
When the entire bench went flying down the touchline as Gabriel Jesus lobbed Alex McCarthy from Kevin De Bruyne’s exquisite pass at Southampton on the final day, the home staff looked at them bemused, not realising the significance City had internally placed upon reaching a century.
That is how Guardiola started creating not only a winning dressing room but a relentless dressing room. Across the years, serious stars like Riyad Mahrez would confide in friends that it was the first time in their careers they didn’t feel justified in complaining at a lack of minutes.
Guardiola would occasionally scream ‘you’re either with me or against me’ to the players and, invariably but not exclusively, it was the former.
So when players look back on their time with Guardiola and say ‘intense’ or ‘demanding’, this is what they mean. He’s great with time off, great with the length of holidays but at the City Football Academy, when he says ‘jump’, you ask how high without thinking twice.
Guardiola started creating not only a winning dressing room but a relentless dressing room
Across the years, serious stars like Riyad Mahrez would confide in friends that it was the first time in their careers they didn’t feel justified in complaining at a lack of minutes
Often with Guardiola, it’s not just the message, but how it’s delivered. It’s this that lingers.
November 2024, for example, saw City stuck in the midst of an unrelenting storm, the like of which Guardiola had never encountered in his coaching career. The City manager, his team and wider group of staff stood in a huge huddle on the training pitches of the City Football Academy. The background was a run of nine defeats in 13 matches, including a humbling 4-1 loss in Portugal to Ruben Amorim’s Sporting.
Such huddles can look normal enough but with Guardiola that isn’t always the case. He does this on two or three occasions during any given season, choosing the opportune moment to deliver a pointed message.
It’s never granular, never about what the session is going to look like or indeed the upcoming game that weekend. No, this is the important, big picture stuff. Indeed his coaching staff maintain that the truly rousing moments – the shots delivered across the bows of his players – often arrive on the grass in the week rather than on matchdays. Sometimes that message is harsh. Sometimes that message is subtle. This one was both.
‘People say I am a genius but I am not a genius, I just work harder than everyone else,’ he told his players during an animated speech. Those present took a double meaning. The first was an admission that there was no magic wand available to shift the course of dire results. The second, altogether more important, was that he had noticed a dip in genuine graft from his squad. And he was never going to wear that one.
Head of performance Donough Holahan, who left for Saint-Etienne last year, was gripped by what he heard. He recalls: ‘Essentially, what he’s saying is: “You’re not doing enough, you need to work harder.” But he will do it in a way where the delivery of it is: “Guys, I need you, I rely on you.”
‘If you sit back and analyse it, it’s like he’s basically saying he needs more from me because it’s not good enough. But the way he does it means you come out of that feeling 10 feet tall. I’d walk through a wall for that man.’
Guardiola was in problem-solving mode in those fraught weeks, when the scars of defeats were visible on his scratched skull, when he bunkered down in his office at the Etihad Stadium well into the early hours after a scarcely believable collapse from three goals up to draw against Feyenoord in the Champions League.
The self-inflicted scratches on Guardiola’s head after City threw away a 3-0 lead to draw with Feyenoord in 2024
The precision and absolute certainty of Guardiola’s City had disappeared. Players were becoming increasingly tetchy with each other. The tendency of big personalities like Kyle Walker and De Bruyne to call out team-mates in training had driven standards when City were winning, but were now starting to grate.
How managers navigate these times tells us everything about them. Walker, for example, is a complicated individual who once refused to take overnight bags with him to the training ground on travel days, so as not to pre-empt being named among the squad. Nevertheless, he is one England’s truly great full backs and had been fundamental to what Guardiola’s City achieved.
Persuaded by his manager at the Japanese restaurant Musu to reject overtures from Bayern in 2023, he left to join Milan two months after that training ground huddle, in January last year. A captain departing mid-season during an injury crisis and when the chips are down is unheard of. But though Guardiola was baffled, he used it as an opportunity to reset.
Bernardo Silva explains to Daily Mail Sport: ‘When things weren’t going well in that January, we all got together and every single one of us was able to talk, to say what they thought about the situation. From the manager, to the captains, to the youngest player in the squad.’
Guardiola has used 111 footballers during his time in Manchester – 79 of those have made five appearances or more – but loves none more than Silva. He is his weakness, the teacher’s pet. It should be no surprise that when a new captain needed choosing last summer – when he needed someone to lead a new-look and developing team – Guardiola took the decision to ditch the collegiate voting system of players (and occasionally staff) and appoint Silva. His leadership and ‘aggressive spirit’ in the role have been flawless.
‘Bernardo’s an incredible leader,’ January signing Marc Guehi says. ‘How vocal he is actually surprised me. It’s not just in key moments, it’s every single day.’
Silva – a man who arrived here in July 2017 sporting pink shorts and wondering why it was so chilly – is Guardiola’s dream, playing in his own image. Nobody has featured in more matches across the Catalan’s career and the numbers are not even close, more than 70 clear of the mesmeric De Bruyne.
With other players, though, there has inevitably been an expiry date. Some – like Silva and Stones and Phil Foden – have gone the distance. Others burn brightly then sag under the weight of all that Guardiola intensity.
The tendency of big personalities like Kevin De Bruyne (left) and Kyle Walker to call out team-mates in training had driven standards when City were winning, but were now starting to grate
Bernardo Silva – a man who arrived here in July 2017 sporting pink shorts and wondering why it was so chilly – is Guardiola’s dream, playing in his own image
David Silva felt he’d had enough almost a year before he eventually said farewell, turning to Foden after a 2-2 draw with Tottenham to speak of mental exhaustion amid a spiky post-match debrief. And he’d only been captain for a few weeks.
‘All the details – the training sessions, every team that came to play against us – Pep had totally analysed how they were going to play and how we had to play,’ the Spaniard says. ‘In that sense he changed the whole philosophy of the team, of completely dominating matches. That’s how he’s achieved what he has. With the idea he has, you always have to stay on top of the players and everything around them.’
Silva played for City for 10 years, the final four on Guardiola’s watch. He left for Real Sociedad in 2020 on his own terms. Not all have. But personalities are different, as are outlooks on careers. Jack Grealish, for example, was all in for those final six months of the Treble campaign. City would not have won it without him but the relentless nature of the schedule and Guardiola’s dedication were not for him long term.
Guardiola’s shaping of Grealish from maverick to team man following his £100million move from Aston Villa in 2021 is clear. Speaking to Daily Mail Sport towards the end of that historic campaign in 2023, he outlined how his manager’s most regular instruction from the sidelines was to draw fouls. Equally, the idea that Guardiola deliberately curtailed Grealish’s natural flair holds less and less water with each passing right back skinned by Jeremy Doku this season.
The truth is that Grealish struggled with the levels of discipline demanded by the City manager. He admitted as much in the same interview, revealing that sometimes he would head into a Manchester bar for a quiet drink wearing a wig. It was amusing and honest but ultimately it caught up with him.
In his final season at the club, Grealish started only seven Premier League matches – he was an unused substitute 12 times – and was missing squads with unexplained injuries. Displays in training saw him fall behind another wide player, Savinho, and the No 10 simply did not react consistently enough to Guardiola’s warnings. It feels significant that despite a season-ending foot injury in 2026, Grealish underwent his rehabilitation at loan club Everton rather than return home.
Raheem Sterling was another who left while technically still in his peak years. The truth is that when he signed for Chelsea for £47.5m in 2022, it was a shock but he was ready for a new start. Some would say he is still looking for it. A phenomenal performer for City, he had, along with De Bruyne, been bought specifically for Guardiola a year before the manager’s arrival and came to personify the City way.
The back post tap-in to finish an exquisitely timed run. The cutbacks from the byline. The jinking in from the left to hammer into the far corner. At one point, he outscored everybody in Europe – including Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski.
Displays in training saw Jack Grealish fall behind another wide player, Savinho, and the No 10 simply did not react consistently enough to Guardiola’s warnings
Raheem Sterling perfected the art of ghosting in right on time at the back post to score
But he was ready to go. There were disagreements about game time and people close to Sterling suggested others earned preferential treatment from the boss. One argument in Guardiola’s office in 2021, as told by biographer Marti Perarnau, was heard by the entire floor, although a display at Aston Villa months later – when Sterling was everywhere – is considered one of his finest games in sky blue.
Sterling comfortably takes a spot in an all-time Guardiola City XI, probably on the left wing where he would edge out Sane, whose own departure in 2020 came a year after he had initially wanted to go to Bayern. The Guardiola-Sane relationship was not always smooth but all of these things are forgotten when they meet now.
Sane actually kept an apartment in Manchester and the pair warmly embraced when current club Galatasaray were last at the Etihad Stadium. ‘Pep didn’t just coach me – he evolved me,’ Sane has said. There now sits a Galatasaray shirt in Guardiola’s office.
Whether a reunion with Joao Cancelo would be quite so warm is up for debate. That one ended so badly that Guardiola had started calling him ‘Mr Cancelo’ by the end, which is something always reserved for individuals he holds in contempt.
Cancelo’s emergence as an inverted full back remains memorable for the attacking audacity he injected into a role Guardiola had first tried in the Bundesliga. Those dinosaurs who claim Guardiola merely adds new labels to old tactics clearly weren’t watching properly when the Portuguese started to establish himself in 2021. It all felt very new but his fall from grace followed a very old-fashioned training ground bust-up. He was jettisoned on loan to Bayern immediately and never came back.
The argument had been about minutes and specifically the threat posed by emerging teenager Rico Lewis. One source back then said: ‘Pep and Joao bicker all the time, they are both passionate and care for each other. They’re almost too similar.’
Aside from that, Cancelo’s defensive ability had started to be questioned. Guardiola could not forget high-profile mistakes away at Real Madrid and twice against Liverpool. Guardiola simply never forgets and this can work for you as well as against you.
He never forgets mistakes but equally he remembers the reactions and the responses too. For example, Stones, colossal when fit and such a presence in title wins and the Treble year, had one foot out of the door in 2020. Guardiola felt he could no longer rely on him and simply stopped playing him.
Joao Cancelo’s defensive ability had started to be questioned. Guardiola could not forget high-profile mistakes away at Real Madrid and against Liverpool. Guardiola simply never forgets
John Stones, such a presence in title wins and the Treble year, had one foot out of the door in 2020. Guardiola felt he could no longer rely on him and simply stopped playing him
As City attempted to sell, Guardiola did not reach out to Stones to discuss the situation, instead letting the chips fall where they may. But the centre half got on the front foot, telling City in no uncertain terms that he was fighting for his place and going nowhere. The rest is history. Stones has eventually decided to move on this summer, six years after Guardiola – mentally at least – had him out of the door.
‘It’s difficult for me to sum him up,’ Stones says. ‘I thought I knew football, but I didn’t. He simplifies things. He’s got special ways of winning games. I know the trust he’s had in me. We probably don’t recognise the amount of belief he always has in us in any situation.’
Without the injuries, Stones could be considered one of the best ever. While suggestions arise the England international has been overly cautious with knocks in recent years, the previously untold risks he went through in 2023, as City made history, will always be remembered by his manager.
Stones suffered a hamstring problem in the weeks before the 2022 winter World Cup, coming back in the nick of time and starting every game in Qatar. On returning, he tweaked his hamstring twice more within a month after pushing his body to the limit to make himself available. On both occasions, City reintegrated Stones more quickly than advised. And he ploughed through it. They devised a plan to see him through to the season’s close.
He didn’t feature in the FA Cup until the final, won against United. He played an hour against RB Leipzig in the Champions League last 16. Fifty-six minutes at Southampton. Just the first half against Leicester City. Stones was being wheeled out until games were won and then relieved. He was benched for others that didn’t need his gallivanting into midfield.
This was peak Guardiola, a coach managing his secret weapon to ensure he had his best team available in the latter stages of the Champions League, his holy grail.
And when he needed him, Stones – by now doing a passable impression of a modern-day Franz Beckenbauer – came through for him. Four lots of 90 minutes in both legs with Bayern and Real Madrid. Then, as we know, the man of the match as the trophy was claimed against Inter in Istanbul.
This is why Guardiola will never have a bad word to say about John Stones. The man who risked his body for immortality.
Guardiola will never have a bad word to say about Stones, who risked his body for immortality
When Guardiola wants to make a point, an arm often extends and the back of his hand will crash into your chest. Meanwhile, anyone who has spent any time in the Catalan’s orbit knows how much he can talk. Words fall in torrents. In the dressing room, on the touchline and – sometimes and very publicly – into a player’s ear as they make their way off the field after a game.
The City manager can listen, too, though. To his staff and to his players. His word may be law but the rules are carefully constructed and, when he feels the time is right, perfectly malleable. This is elite sport and at this level nothing ever stays the same. From that point of view, Guardiola had to dig deep when everything changed in the early part of 2020.
Guardiola was not immune as the world tried to adjust to the Covid outbreak and all that followed. What’s more, it coincided with a time when his hold on his players was not as it had been or indeed should be. Strangely, given that City had won all three domestic trophies the previous season, Guardiola’s authority was suddenly not as comprehensive or naturally intuitive.
Players have admitted to ‘having lots of problems that year’, without publicly going into detail. Having lost 2-0 at Tottenham that February, Guardiola opened the dressing room floor to grievances.
What came back was a barrage about tinkering with the line-up – Guardiola had not picked the same team in consecutive league games all year – and regularly altering formations following Mikel Arteta’s defection to Arsenal in the December. The 45-minute inquest was led by a passionate De Bruyne, whom the manager tended to cut more slack.
Sources among the squad have said City encourage players to call each other out in the dressing room and that was certainly true in north London. And even the manager wasn’t safe. ‘Things were said by players that simply had to be said,’ reveals a source now.
City had 17 days between losing that game and returning to action. Guardiola’s plan was to head off to Abu Dhabi for a warm-weather training camp but the players pushed back, preferring to holiday themselves. The players got their way and the trip was canned. Perhaps tellingly, a number of Liverpool stars, who won the league by a mile that year, chose to train together in Dubai.
The season wasn’t a disaster. City won the Carabao Cup again, with Foden coming of age en route. But two chastening defeats – an error-strewn FA Cup semi-final against Arteta’s Arsenal and the shambolic Champions League quarter-final surrender to Lyon in Lisbon – convinced some of Guardiola’s staff that some players had simply stopped listening.
Sources among the squad have said City encourage players to call each other out in the dressing room – and De Bruyne was given more slack than most
The error-strewn FA Cup semi-final defeat by Arsenal in 2020 convinced some staff that the players had stopped listening
It took Guardiola a while to commit to a new contract after that. Once he had, it was time to think again, to spin some of the wheels in different directions. Fewer meetings and less analysis came the next season, Guardiola was keen to alter the dynamics within a group that had grown fractious. New captain Fernandinho told him at the start of the season: ‘You sort the tactics and I’ll sort the players.’
Fernandinho had inherited the captaincy from the reluctant David Silva. For all of his brilliance, captaincy was not what Silva wanted. Following Kompany would have filled even the most adept motivators with dread. He’s quiet, reserved. The polar opposite to the born leader who went before him.
So Fernandinho had the armband after undertaking leadership training organised by the club but De Bruyne, the finest player of City’s modern era, was back calling out tactical decisions after the third game of the 2020-21 campaign, a calamitous 5-2 home defeat by Leicester City.
In hauling off Fernandinho, a decision sources described as petulant while chasing victory at 1-1, players felt Guardiola had thrown his own gameplan out of the window. The Brazilian made those feelings abundantly clear in front of the group later on. No Guardiola team had ever conceded five before but once again the floor was thrown open to the players.
‘It’s important to have this kind of freedom to speak because it’s not nice for the players, or even for the manager, to only have the manager speaking every time, when you play so many games during the season,’ says Fernandinho himself. ‘It’s important for players or a staff member, whoever, just step forward to try to say something different.’
City were to win the Premier League by 12 points that season, proof that moments that feel explosive and seismic at the time are later viewed in the proper context of being mere bumps in the road.
As long as players behave respectfully, Guardiola can handle being challenged and it was key to what happened that season, to the way City managed to get their show back on the road. To this day, the affection Guardiola and Fernandinho have for each other is pure, just as his mutual respect is with De Bruyne. The Brazilian’s send-off in 2022 was a 15-course meal at a favourite Italian restaurant in Failsworth for almost 100 staff.
Indeed the overwhelming majority of City’s current and former players talk so glowingly about the manager that occasionally you wonder if this can truly be authentic. And yet listening to how they deliver those words, it plainly is genuine. All of them say they didn’t understand football until meeting Guardiola, to such an extent that it is a running joke.
De Bruyne, the finest player of City’s modern era, was back calling out tactical decisions after the third game of the 2020-21 campaign, a calamitous 5-2 home defeat by Leicester City
To this day, the affection Guardiola and Fernandinho have for each other is pure
The great Spaniard Rodri, who Guardiola turned into the Premier League’s first Ballon d’Or winner since 2008, went even further: ‘He has elevated me to a level I didn’t know I could reach. He gives you a toolbox. You have more tools than the rest.’
As a deep-lying midfielder like his manager, Rodri understandably has it that bit tougher than the others with Guardiola, who once stopped a session dead to go crazy at his metronome for overhitting one pass in a drill before an easy win. Rodri, who once went for coffee with chef Jorge Gutierrez to confide insecurities about what was being asked of him as a makeshift centre half, merely takes it on the chin.
Ederson changed the way City play and arguably became the most influential goalkeeper in the Premier League era. Becoming the spare man and an extra outfielder when in possession, the Brazilian finished his City career with a ridiculous eight assists. He once laughed that Guardiola can be ‘annoying’ while admitting in the same breath that he owed everything to him.
The really smart players understand their manager’s complexities because they know life with Guardiola is not a straight line. They indulge the philosophy of crazy. Think more, learn more, work more and, ultimately, win more. It tends to take everything out of everybody involved, which not only explains the handful of top players who just haven’t managed to stick around but also makes the sheer number of players and staff who reach five years or more under him quite astonishing.
‘It was quite easy to adapt because I demand a lot from myself, so if my manager demands a lot that’s fine,’ Bernardo Silva says. ‘I prefer that to someone who ignores me. It’s a sign that they care for you. For most of the guys at City it has been quite easy, because the way City selects players is unique. You want to have coachable players.’
Silva’s old team-mate Ilkay Gundogan enjoyed life with Guardiola so much he returned for a second spell after enduring a difficult year at Barcelona. It didn’t really work out but he still speaks to his old gaffer plenty. The first signing of the Guardiola era, the pair were neighbours on the 14th floor of City Suites, sharing a drink on occasions, and Guardiola nipped to nearby Salut Wines to celebrate Gundogan’s return to the club in August 2024.
The Treble-winning captain, his quiet leadership drew respect from all corners. His impact was immediate all those years ago, noticeably pointing out opposition’s strengths and weaknesses when not playing or going over to offer a hand to players who themselves were benched.
That is his legacy inside the building, whereas outside it is the emotional double against United in the 2023 Cup final and that brace on the drama-filled final day in 2022 against Aston Villa. Gundogan runs Bernardo Silva very close in the fight to be crowned the perfect Guardiola midfielder.
Ederson once laughed that Guardiola can be ‘annoying’ while admitting in the same breath that he owed everything to him
Ilkay Gundogan runs Bernardo Silva very close in the fight to be crowned the perfect Guardiola midfielder
‘He opens your eyes to a level of detail and ambition you didn’t even know existed,’ Gundogan says of Guardiola. ‘I’ve had serious conversations with Pep about coaching and he’s been very supportive. Though he always jokes that if I ever become a coach, I shouldn’t call him to ask for advice. That I have to figure it out myself.’
It’s reasonable to suggest that Gundogan – along with the other long-servers – have been given all the tools.
Whitewashed walls. Pictures of his kids. Rudimentary filing cabinets. Cluttered books on the windowsill, from coaching visionaries to the history of Gaza. Aside from the perk of a private bathroom, Guardiola’s office at the City Football Academy is like thousands of others.
But few will have the piece of equipment that he introduced for a while. A gravity inversion table standing at the side of the room. An ominous looking bit of kit, it is used to counter chronic back problems that eventually saw him endure an emergency operation and miss a win at Sheffield United in the weeks after the Treble in 2023. He’d hobbled around Asia on the pre-season tour that followed and at times, it was painful to watch.
The inversion gear is a full-length, almost vertical, table that Guardiola would step on, rest his head on the neck support and tuck his ankles under a bar for stability. Strapped in by a belt while gripping onto the handles he used his body weight to move the table horizontally. The aim? To stretch out his back.
It conjures visions of players wandering in as the manager is suspended in mid-air and that’s pertinent but this office is where he holds his heart-to-hearts, where he has final conversations with departing stars, where he decided to shock everybody by acting as a character witness for Benjamin Mendy during a lengthy sex abuse trial.
It’s where he devises and puts together the structure of legendary team meetings, which are focused on one sole theme and rarely deviate. For example, when academy centre half Max Alleyne was rushed back from a loan at Watford to cover an injury crisis earlier this season, he had an entire meeting dedicated to him.
Using clips of Alleyne from Watford and City’s Under 21s, Guardiola wanted to prove to his new team-mates how good the 20-year-old was before he was thrown into a game against Brighton after just one training session. He showed the squad footage of Alleyne’s build-up and defensive work, pairing them with examples of City’s seasoned pros failing to complete similar actions with the same aplomb. Again, sources used the phrase ’10 feet tall’.
Few will have the piece of equipment that he introduced for a while. A gravity inversion table standing at the side of the room. An ominous looking bit of kit, used to counter back problems
When academy centre half Max Alleyne was rushed back from a loan at Watford to cover an injury crisis earlier this season, Guardiola had an entire meeting dedicated to him
Everything centres around the office which lies down the corridor from his coaching staff and that of director of football Hugo Viana. It’s where a plan to fine players £1,000 for arriving late was hatched, although rules and their monetary value always seemed to relax over time.
It is where he wondered how far to take criticism of Walker for a stupid sending off during a dead rubber in Leipzig that delivered heavy ramifications for their Champions League knockout games.
Walker didn’t play a single minute for the next four weeks with a ‘knock’ and Guardiola seethed at the right back for months afterwards. It is where he stormed back to having stopped a session, ordering everybody inside, after left back Oleksandr Zinchenko spoke back to him.
It is where he sat and stewed over one star player whom he’d rebuked in a dressing room after failing to run off when substituted as City fell two goals down.
Like Zinchenko, the player answered back during the tirade and was constantly reminded of it for the remainder of the season, barely featuring for months on end.
There lies the contradiction with Guardiola, the stuff that players need to pick through and understand and cope with. He is open, honest, gives players the floor to offer their views yet only within the parameters he sets. Sometimes, those parameters are not overly clear.
How do you square that schoolteacher disciplinarian off with the manager acting like a cool lecturer, who makes sure that in his high-end hotel rooms, there is always a table and several chairs to accommodate staff or players to enter and discuss whatever is needed?
The laidback academic comparison goes further. Such as when Guardiola occasionally turns up in jeans to Sunday sessions, when those who didn’t feature on Saturday mix in with the Under 21s in drills described as ‘manic’.
Walker didn’t play a single minute for the next four weeks with a ‘knock’ and Guardiola seethed at the right back for months afterwards when he was sent off at RB Leipzig
Guardiola once stopped a session, ordering everybody inside, after left back Oleksandr Zinchenko spoke back to him
On those days, he has been known to become preoccupied with teaching academy trialists who will never, ever play for him how to receive passes and correct their body shape.
And then, in recent months, he’s been seen not even watching, preferring to look down at his phone instead.
That is Guardiola. From one day to the next, nobody knows. Those who stay the course can reach 10 feet tall just by remaining on their toes.
COMING TOMORROW: PEP AND MAN CITY – THE UNTOLD DECADE, Part 5: The Great Reinventor
