the 55-year-old appeared with multiple scratches on his head and nose<\/a> following a disappointing 3-3 Champions League draw with Feyenoord in November 2024. <\/p>\nWhile the coach does not admit to the idea that his personal struggles affected his ability to do his job, Manel Estiarte, a long-time member of Guardiola’s technical staff, speaks about how he had to address players who were worried by their manager’s behaviour.<\/p>\n
“They were worried because Pep was anxious,” he says.<\/p>\n
“He was sad. He was different. And only I knew the reason. <\/p>\n
“And I said to the team, ‘please, you have to understand, you’re not playing with a coach who can be a bit impulsive, who can be a bit intense, who can be sometimes up and down. You’re seeing a human being. He’s getting a divorce’.”<\/p>\n
Alongside scenes where Guardiola obsesses over tactics, there are many where he gives candid speeches and berates his team.<\/p>\n
Following a defeat by Bayer Leverkusen in November 2025, he tells his squad: “I work for you and I leave my life, my divorce and my family is away and everything for all of you. And what do you give back? <\/p>\n
“The performance you have done, all of you. It’s a disgrace guys.<\/p>\n
“When I see that, I am exhausted, I’m drained, I want to quit. When you play like this, I feel alone.”<\/p>\n
In some scenes, the Spaniard warns his team that they will “get a new manager” if performances do not improve.<\/p>\n
In others, he speaks about using a knife to get into their hearts and insists on his squad hugging one another and himself before matches, even blaming poor performances on lukewarm goal celebrations.<\/p>\n
Guardiola stepped down as City manager at the end of the 25-26 campaign after 10 years at the Etihad, during which time he won 20 trophies, including both the FA Cup and League Cup in his final season.<\/p>\n
Speaking about his next steps, he says: “I don’t know even myself what I am going to do,” adding: “It will be difficult to come back. That’s my feeling today. I need to refresh many things that happened in my personal life.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite signing a contract extension in November 2024, the series reveals how close Guardiola came to not renewing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-596602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}