Pep Guardiola will leave his role as Manchester City manager this summer, ending one of the most successful tenures in Premier League history, with former Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca expected to replace him.
Multiple sources briefed on the situation say Guardiola is preparing to depart City at the end of a season in which his side have won the Carabao Cup and FA Cup, with Saturday’s triumph over Chelsea securing a 20th major trophy for the 55-year-old during a 10-year spell at the Etihad.
Maresca is now expected to take over at City, who may yet win this season’s Premier League, four months after his exit from Chelsea.
The Athletic revealed in December that Maresca was high among those City were considering amid a growing sense that Guardiola would bring the curtain down on a glittering decade at City.
Maresca went on to exit Stamford Bridge in January and The Athletic disclosed that Maresca informed Chelsea — twice in late October and again in mid-December — he was talking to City representatives about his candidacy for the role.
Guardiola’s City contract had been due to run until June 2027, having last signed fresh terms in November 2024. Amid continued speculation in recent months the club’s position has consistently been that he has one more year on his deal and they have always been hopeful he will stay.
City have two games of the campaign remaining, against Bournemouth and Aston Villa, and these will now mark the final matches of a glorious reign in which the Catalan has guided City to six Premier League titles and their first Champions League triumph, in 2023.
Guardiola has won six Premier League titles at City — and could yet win a seventh. (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
The home match against Aston Villa on May 24 — which could see them clinch the title if they can overturn leaders Arsenal’s two-point advantage — would be the last of Guardiola’s record-setting tenure as City manager.
Guardiola had shut down questions over his future in the build up to and aftermath of Saturday’s FA Cup final. “One more year of contract,” he replied when asked during his pre-match press conference if the cup final would be his final trip to Wembley as City manager.
“Rumours?,” he responded, when asked about his future by TNT Sports after the game. He then made a hasty exit and added: “Have a lovely evening,”
The timing of Guardiola’s exit comes with the outcome of — and any potential punishments from — the investigation into the more than 115 charges of alleged breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations still to be communicated. City deny the allegations.
City’s long-serving director of football Txiki Begiristain, a close ally of Guardiola, left the club at the end of last season. Sporting CP’s Hugo Viana was subsequently announced as his replacement.
Guardiola, who previously spent four years as Barcelona head coach and three at Bayern Munich before taking the City job in the summer of 2016, has frequently spoken about the future in recent months.
When asked the day after The Athletic’s story broke in December, Guardiola refused to confirm outright he would remain at City beyond this June, despite having a contract which runs until the summer of 2027.
“I still enjoy it,” Guardiola said, per City’s website, when asked about beating Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final. “Still, we are much better than last season but not the team we should be. That requires time. Hopefully, next season and the end of this season we can do it.”
Maresca has worked at the Manchester club before, leading City’s Under-21s for the 2020-21 season and returning as a first-team assistant to Guardiola in the summer of 2022.
The 46-year-old joined Chelsea in the summer of 2024 after guiding Leicester City to promotion from the Championship. He led Chelsea to Champions League qualification and won the Conference League and Club World Cup during his debut season in charge.
The Italian left the west-London club on January 1 despite being under contract until 2029. He had previously sparked uncertainty over his future in December after he said that the 48 hours before their win against Everton had been his “worst since I joined the club, because many people didn’t support us”.
He was replaced by Liam Rosenior, who left his role as Strasbourg head coach to occupy the vacancy, who was himself dismissed in April.
City have struggled to maintain their dizzying levels since winning a record-extending fourth successive title in 2023-24, and finished third in the league last season — 13 points behind eventual champions Liverpool.
They ended the campaign without a trophy and were knocked out of the Club World Cup by Saudi Pro League side Al Hilal in the round of 16 last summer.
This term, they have again underperformed at times and began the calendar year by going four games without a win in the Premier League, including a 2-0 defeat by city rivals Manchester United. They were also beaten 3-1 by Norwegian side Bodo/Glimt in the Champions League, but overcame Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final to secure the season’s first piece of silverware.
City are now two points behind league leaders Arsenal, having re-ignited hopes of another title after last month’s win over Mikel Arteta’s side, before handing the impetus back to the north London club after dropping points against Everton.
A legacy like few others
Analysis by senior writer Daniel Taylor
Has there ever been a manager with such a far-reaching legacy? First, there was the Barcelona team, with Lionel Messi at its heart, that had genuine claims to be the most beautifully assembled club side in the history of the sport. Then there was the Manchester City team that changed the landscape of English football.
But the trophies, the glories, the doubles, trebles and even more spectacular successes — six trophies, lest it be forgotten, in one year for Barca — tell only part of the story about why Pep Guardiola will be remembered among the genuine greats of his profession.
Just look how his influence stretches to the lower divisions of English football and the number of teams who have used Project Pep to change their own thinking.
Look how his tactics have been copied, how it is the norm these days at every level of the sport for attacks to build from the back, and how his methodology has been taken on by a small army of other coaches.
It is the same all the way down the football pyramid, from kids’ matches to grassroots level. It all starts with Guardiola — a pioneer, a shape-changer, a history-maker, even before taking into account that it would need a small aircraft hangar to store all his trophies.
Football will carry on without him. Yet if he does leave Guardiola’s influence will still be visible in England, and further beyond, at football grounds of all different sizes. That, in itself, gives him credentials to be recognised as the real Special One, even if that nickname has already gone to somebody else.
Pep in numbers
By Will Jeanes
Six of Guardiola’s trophies at City have been the league title, including four in a row from 2020-21 to 2023-24 — the only time in the entire history of the English top flight (1888-89 onwards) that this has been achieved.
In the third of those seasons, 2022-23, Guardiola finally delivered the Champions League to the Etihad Stadium — fulfilling what had been the club’s dream since the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008.
As well as the Premier League and the Champions League, City also won the FA Cup in that campaign — becoming the second English club to achieve the European treble after Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in 1998-99.
Guardiola also won the treble at Barcelona, making him one of just two managers to attain European club football’s holy grail twice.
Overall, though, it is in the Premier League where Guardiola has made his biggest impact at City, ripping up the record books across his decade in Manchester — most notably the 100-point season in 2017-18.
In total, four of the 11-best points totals in a 38-game Premier League season have been achieved by the Spaniard at City.
How Guardiola changed English football
Analysis by football data writer Thom Harris
It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of Guardiola’s impact, not only on the way that football looks and feels in the Premier League, but throughout England’s professional landscape as a whole.
Though it took a season for his ideas to sink in — we all remember Claudio Bravo and a number of his early City full-backs nervously tucking into midfield — Guardiola’s philosophy eventually sustained the most dominant team that the Premier League has ever seen. Before him, English football’s most successful managers championed physicality, directness and quick combinations on the counter-attack. Guardiola sought to slow things down control games with settled possession, and move the ball into spaces that the meticulous planning and player positioning would create.
Such was the success of Guardiola’s side that teams soon began to imitate his approach. The goalkeeper quickly became an important figure in the build-up as an extra man, while defenders up and down the country began to take risks passing out from the back. As we can see from the visualisation below, average pass completion statistics through England’s top four leagues crept up as his City team flourished, with more sides prioritising technical players and practicing passing patterns to help them play through the press.
When Guardiola joined City in 2016, there was widespread resistance to his ways, almost a desperation to prove that his quick passing football could never work on these shores.
As he moves towards his departure, ten years, six Premier League titles, five League Cups, three Community Shields, three FA Cups, a Premier League points record and a Champions League trophy later, he has proven those doubters wrong.
What now for City?
Analysis by Manchester City correspondent Sam Lee
This will be a shock for a lot of fans, despite the steady build-up of stories about Guardiola’s future over the past few months, starting with David’s story about City’s interest in Maresca in December.
Guardiola himself has talked about how happy he is at City and that he has a contract for another season, and he has talked about being back with the squad to go again next season on a number of occasions.
That has been considered by some enough proof that he has not been thinking about leaving the club in recent months, especially for the vast majority of City fans who do not want that to be the case. They desperately want him to stay for as long as possible, which is essentially the same position as the club itself.
But this has been the direction of travel for some time now. There are sources around City who had heard as long ago as last summer that this would be Guardiola’s last season, and that line of thinking has built up real momentum over the past few weeks.
City fans are no strangers to big departures at the end of a season; throughout Guardiola’s decade in charge they have said goodbye to Pablo Zabaleta, Yaya Toure, Vincent Kompany, David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Fernandinho, Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin De Bruyne, all in consecutive years. Throw in Ederson and Kyle Walker last season, too.
This summer it will be both Bernardo Silva and John Stones saying goodbye, and the likelihood is that Guardiola will join them.
It promises to be a big summer of change for City. (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
City have always managed to move on, usually sooner but sometimes later, no matter the importance of the player departing, but much of that can be put down to Guardiola’s steadying hand.
It is tempting to believe that without Guardiola, everything changes. For all that the club have had brilliant players, the success of the academy and the strength of the off-pitch structures, he has been the figurehead that has pulled everything together.
Just as it’s certain Guardiola will now leave, it appears that Maresca is the chosen replacement. That might split opinion among supporters, not least because many would have been hoping for Vincent Kompany, but what is certain is that Guardiola and Maresca have become close and there are similarities between them.
Many Chelsea players speak very highly of Maresca and those at City during the Italian’s time as Guardiola’s assistant, and in his role as Under-23s boss, say that he is an extremely detailed, personable coach.
Considering the potential for a new manager and the departures of long-serving Guardiola cornerstones like Stones and Silva, this is shaping up to be a big summer of change at City.
