Why Pep Guardiola left Barcelona
Robin Bairner
- 26 Aug 2021 10:52 BST
- 3 min read
Pep Guardiola has announced his intention to leave Manchester City at the end of his contract, which expires in 2023.
It is a move that should continue a trend of Guardiola departing clubs on his terms, though his stay at the Etihad Stadium is considerably longer than his previous stints at both Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
By the time 2023 rolls around, he will have spent seven years at Man City – the same amount of time that he had at Barca and Bayern combined.
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Guardiola has been successful wherever he has gone but it was his four-year stint as the head coach at Camp Nou that served to define him as a coach. His team was not only one of the greatest club sides that has ever been, his philosophy laid the foundation for Spain’s dominance of the international game between 2008 and 2012.
When he announced his intention to leave Barcelona, it came as a massive shock.
We were playing brilliantly but I was on my knees and had no new tactical ideas left
- Pep Guardiola“I left Barcelona because I was worn out. I explained how I felt to the president in October 2011. There was no change of heart after that. So it would have made no sense at all for me to start changing the squad. I knew I was leaving!” he explains in the book Pep Confidential: The Inside Story of Pep Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich.
“The facts of the matter are that we won four titles that year and were playing better than ever, with the 3-4-3 we used against Real Madrid and the 3-7-0 I opted for in the Club World Cup. We were playing brilliantly but I was on my knees and had no new tactical ideas left. That was why I left. There was no other reason.”
Although he has not said as much, it appears that Guardiola is now starting to feel this sense of burn out with the Man City side.
“After seven years on this team, I think I'm going to have a stop. I'm going to have to take a break, to see what we've done,” he told an XP Investimentos event on Wednesday.
Guardiola has indicated that rather than go back to Barcelona, he intends to take on a national team job, with the opportunity of coaching a South American side particularly appealing to him.
