Pep Guardiola addressed mounting speculation over his future at Manchester City, saying he plans to hold talks with club chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak in the coming days before deciding whether to remain for the final year of his contract.
Several British media outlets, including BBC, have reported that Guardiola is expected to leave at the end of the season, with former Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca, previously Guardiola’s assistant at City, emerging as the leading candidate to replace him.
Speaking after a draw at AFC Bournemouth that ended City’s hopes of winning the Premier League title, Guardiola stopped short of dismissing reports linking him with an exit after a decade packed with trophies and success at the club.
“I speak with my chairman first,” Guardiola said. “After that, when we talk, we will decide everything, whether to continue for one more year or not.”
Asked if those discussions would take place after the final game of the season against Aston Villa, Guardiola replied: “No, we will talk in the next few days.”
There was no immediate response from Maresca’s representatives when contacted by The Associated Press (AP).
Guardiola, who has won 17 major trophies at City since arriving in English football in 2016, has repeatedly been asked in recent weeks whether he would stay beyond this season.
On Monday, he rolled his eyes when another question was posed about his future and answered: “I’ve said so many times, I have one more year.”
After the Bournemouth game, he said he wanted to “focus on putting the team at the highest point” before announcing his future plans.
“I’m the happiest man on the planet to be at this club,” he said. “This club is extraordinary. The season is over for us, so we want to arrive at the last game with our fans.”
In overseeing the most successful period in City’s history during his decade in charge, Guardiola has spent longer at the club than he did at FC Barcelona from 2008-12 and Bayern Munich from 2013-16.
His biggest achievement at City was winning the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup treble in the 2022-23 season, matching the feat achieved by Manchester United in 1999.
Guardiola’s City team has won the Premier League six times and became the only team in the nearly 140-year history of English football to win four straight top-flight titles from 2021-24. It was also the first team to earn 100 points in a top-flight season in 2017-18 and the first to win the domestic treble of the league, FA Cup and League Cup in the same season in 2018-19.
This season, City won both the League Cup and FA Cup but will finish second behind Arsenal in the Premier League. That was confirmed after the 1-1 draw at Bournemouth left City four points behind Arsenal.
Guardiola has also reshaped English football with a possession-based style that emphasized building from the goalkeeper and defense, an approach that has since been widely adopted across the country, from youth teams to Premier League rivals.
Asked Monday whether he thought a stand at City’s Etihad Stadium should be named after him, Guardiola said: “The important thing in our lives is when you look back, you can say, ‘Wow.’ You can look with a big smile and say that was good.”
“I am pretty sure,” he added, “most of the people who lived this time together can feel that.”
The final years of Guardiola’s tenure at City have unfolded under the shadow of an ongoing legal case involving the Premier League.
City was charged by the league in February 2023 with more than 100 alleged financial breaches, including providing misleading information about its sources of income.
The case was heard by an independent commission between September and December 2024, but no verdict has been reached.
Punishment could be as severe as expulsion from the top flight. City has consistently denied the charges, and Guardiola has said he is “fully convinced that we will be innocent.”
It has been four-and-a-half months since Maresca left Chelsea following an apparent deterioration in the Italian’s relationship with the club’s hierarchy during a period when British media were already reporting that he had been lined up as Guardiola’s eventual replacement at City.
Maresca played down those reports at the time.
He knows City well, having served as an academy coach in the 2020-21 season and Guardiola’s assistant in 2022-23 when the team won the treble. After that, Maresca joined Leicester City, which he led to the Championship title.
Maresca’s only top-flight experience as a senior coach came during his 18 months with Chelsea from June 2024 to January 2026, when the London club won the Club World Cup and Conference League titles and qualified for the Champions League.
