Six Premier League titles, two FA Cups, four League Cups, the Champions League, the Super Cup and the Club World Cup won in eight years. With English football's second treble part of this, it is a record that may never be bested.
Next May, it could be over and the weekly spectacle of Guardiola's City cuffing away their latest foe no more. Opponents and their fans will hope so, though he could decide to extend his tenure. Should I stay or should I go is a familiar dilemma for Guardiola, who left May's 2-1 FA Cup final defeat by Manchester United unsure whether to allow his contract to expire and walk away next summer.
Coldly decisive in matters relating to his team, Guardiola is less so on his own future, which points to mixed feelings about when it may be right to depart a club rebuilt bespoke for him. With the hiring of Ferran Soriano as the chief executive and Txiki Begiristain as the director of football in September and October 2012, the chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, was constructing a Barcelona-esque operation in east Manchester primed for Guardiola's arrival. Soriano and Begiristain held similar positions at Guardiola's boyhood club during (in Begiristain's case) or just before (Soriano) his 2008-12 span of success as head coach.
This story is from the July 18, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the July 18, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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