Pep interviewed by GQ: “After this stage, I need to focus on myself. The last year? Even Jordan won six rings in 15 championships.”
He doesn’t know when, but Pep Guardiola is sure of one thing: “After this stage with Manchester City, I’ll stop.” He said this in a long interview with GQ Spain, conducted in his hometown of Barcelona for the launch of a new wellness clinic in which he is one of the investors. Among other things, he also talked about his future and his plan to take a break, as he did at the end of his first coaching adventure with Barça. “It’s already decided, more than decided,” Guardiola said of his break. “I don’t know how long it will be, whether it will be one year, two, three, five, ten, or fifteen. I don’t know. I know it will happen after this stage with City because I need to stop and focus on myself, on my body. I have to do it.”
Pep has clear ideas about 2024-25, his worst season since joining City: “When you win six Premier League titles, there’s bound to be a bad spell. It’s human nature. We probably should have changed more players, but it’s easy to say that with hindsight. In the end, we reached the FA Cup final and finished third, not twelfth as we would have done if we had given up: it wasn’t that bad, and looking back, we can see that it wasn’t all a disaster. But there were months when we didn’t win. And I think what happened to us is healthy; all the injuries we had made us realize what wasn’t working. I think it will be positive for the coming years.”
fall— Pep also talks about his fall. “I expected the criticism, it gives you energy. They’re the same people who told me I only won at Barcelona because I knew the team, who told me when I arrived in Manchester that English football was different. In sport, you can’t always win, and losing is part of the process. Michael Jordan was the greatest, but he won six rings in 15 years. Tiger Woods was the greatest, but he also lost more majors than he played. I’ve played 16 championships and won 13: I’ve lost a few, but I haven’t done badly. And I’m happy that’s the way it is, especially in this perfect society where we always have to prove that we’re happy. The important thing is to give it your all and do your best: I know I didn’t give up, that we got worse results than we expected, but I’ll keep trying, convinced that next year things will be better. Of course, there’s no other profession in the world where 60,000 people sing that you’ll lose your job the next morning, as happened to me for 4-5 months. The pressure on our shoulders is enormous.“
lamine yamal— Guardiola also says that his adventure at Barcelona is ”over for good. It was very good, but it’s over.” He then talks about Lamine Yamal, the new phenomenon who has inherited the number 10 shirt that belonged to Leo Messi. “We have to let him make his own career,” says Pep. “Just the fact that they compare him to Messi is huge, as if they were comparing a painter to Van Gogh: that there is this comparison is a positive sign, but we have to let him make his own career. I think we have the talent, but Messi scores 90 goals a year without stopping for 15 years.”
