Pep Guardiola reveals truth on premature Man City exit following expectation of decade-long tenure

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City Xtra

17 July 2026

Former

Manchester City

manager Pep Guardiola has opened up on the real reasons behind his decision to leave the Etihad Stadium this summer, in a new interview.

Pep Guardiola

‘s departure from

in May brought to a close one of the most extraordinary tenures in the history of English football, with the Catalan having overseen nine years of sustained excellence at the Etihad Stadium that yielded six

Premier League

titles, three

FA Cups

, five Carabao Cups and the club’s first

UEFA Champions League

title in 2023.

The manner of his exit had

been the subject of considerable speculation

in the months leading up to its confirmation, with reports at various stages suggesting that Guardiola had originally considered staying beyond the 2025-26 season before eventually concluding that the time had come to step away from the demands of day-to-day management.

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His successor

Enzo Maresca

has since been appointed and is already

settled into his role at the Etihad Stadium

, with the Italian having received a personal message from former

City

assistant coach

Pepijn Lijnders

upon his arrival – a gesture that underlined the goodwill with which the club’s outgoing managerial team passed the baton to the new era.

In a new interview with

OKX

, Guardiola has now addressed the circumstances of his departure, confirming for the first time that a contractual pathway to staying was available to him and that the decision to walk away was entirely his own.

“I had one more year contract so I could’ve stayed,” said Guardiola. “But I had the feeling that I didn’t have the energy that is required to be at the top, or be demanding for games every three days.”

The admission that he felt his energy reserves were no longer sufficient for the relentless demands of top-level management is a remarkably candid one from a man whose standards throughout his time at the Etihad Stadium were nothing short of extraordinary, and it speaks to the self-awareness that has been as central to his success as the tactical brilliance with which he is more commonly associated.

The reference to “every three days” is telling, with Guardiola acknowledging specifically that it is the relentless volume and pace of the fixture calendar – rather than any single aspect of the job – that ultimately persuaded him that the moment to step away had arrived, even with a further year of contractual security available to him.

The confirmation that Guardiola could have remained for another season but chose not to dispels any lingering ambiguity about the nature of his exit, with the Catalan’s own words making clear that Manchester City’s transition to

Maresca and the post-Guardiola era

was a choice rather than a necessity – driven by the manager’s personal reading of his own capacity to sustain the standards he demanded of himself and those around him.

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That distinction matters in the context of how Maresca’s appointment has been framed since its confirmation, with

club chairman

Khaldoon Al Mubarak

and CEO

Ferran Soriano

having spoken publicly about the “thoughtful and structured process” behind the succession – language that now feels even more deliberate given Guardiola’s confirmation that the door was open to him staying longer than he ultimately chose.

For Maresca, the knowledge that his predecessor departed on his own terms and with his legacy intact – rather than at a point of exhaustion or failure – represents an ideal set of circumstances in which to inherit one of the most successful football clubs in the world, with director of football

Hugo Viana

and the wider club structure having had the benefit of planning a measured, considered transition rather than a reactive one.

Whether Guardiola returns to management at some point in the future, as has been widely speculated, remains his own business to determine in his own time – but the clarity and honesty with which he has described his departure from the Etihad Stadium leaves no room for doubt that the decision, when it came, was made from a place of genuine conviction rather than fatigue or defeat.

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