Soap operas, intense monologues & unanswered questions - What’s it really like to cover Pep Guardiola?

What is the best thing about being a Manchester City reporter?

It’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot recently.

The guarantee of silverware? The annual blockbuster Champions League nights? Seeing the world’s best players routinely do their thing? Any of those would be worthy responses, but for me, there’s one aspect of covering City that is unparalleled: spending time in the presence of Pep Guardiola.

After all, the City boss is a unique figure in football, one who changed the entire landscape of the sport with his possession-based ethos. His influence is seen not just across the Premier League, but in non-league and at grassroots levels, while in his time at City he has transformed the expectations of what is needed to win a Premier League title. The year prior to Guardiola’s arrival in England, the league was sewn up with 81 points - since then, it’s taken an average of 94 points to be crowned champions.

Sixteen years on from his first season in charge of Barcelona - when he guided his boyhood club to the treble - and Guardiola remains the greatest mind in world football, even if he’s enduring a sticky patch at present.

During his time as a manager, he has remained at the forefront of the game’s tactical innovations. In the four years that Manchester World have reported on City’s fortunes, we’ve witnessed countless tactical rejigs, be it a striker-less system, incorporating Erling Haaland, inverted full-backs, John Stones pushing into midfield and the team’s recent evolution with ball carriers.

Guardiola’s ceaseless brainwaves mean watching City is different to every other Premier League side. You’re constantly on the lookout for those minor tweaks and in-game alterations. One such example came in a relatively forgettable Champions League game against Sevilla in 2022, when Kevin De Bruyne was tasked with playing on the right after his introduction from the bench. Guardiola noticed a weakness in the opposition, and within three minutes of his substitution De Bruyne’s cross from the right picked out Julian Alvarez, who slotted home to put City in the lead.

Unsurprisingly, those prophetic-like qualities have fostered a supreme sense of confidence and self-belief within Guardiola, who will always credit his players and praise the opposition, but is never shy in reminding reporters how much success he’s enjoyed in England.

From Jose Mourinho to Julia Roberts: The Pep Guardiola press conference

It’s in the Catalan’s press conferences when his personality really comes to the fore - and this season in particular, his media briefings have been box office. He may never publicly admit it, but Guardiola loves the theatre and soap opera of a press conference, of having a captivated audience in the palm of his hand.

Those in attendance for the famous 11-minute ‘happy flowers’ rant a few years ago will never forget it, while his response to the Premier League charges was like observing a one-man play. “I am not moving from this seat,” he defiantly stated, not long after an odd analogy about Julius Cesar.

Guardiola’s unwavering support of the club also makes him a unique manager to report on. Few in the top flight would so strenuously stand by their employer, but the City boss has fully bought into this project, is fortunate to have a best mate as director of football and has formed unshakable bonds with other members of the club’s hierarchy.

In many ways that’s no surprise. City’s courting of Guardiola began years before he eventually arrived at the club and so many aspects of City’s structure were created to entice him to Manchester. No wonder he has grown so comfortable and, despite his repeated references of late, there’s no chance Guardiola will ever be sacked.

It’s another reason why he speaks with such confidence and assurance in press conferences, unlike other Premier League managers there’s no concern about where one bad run of results could leave him. That Guardiola signed a new deal after losing four in a row was evidence of that.

It also explains why the 53-year-old is such a strong advocate for managers elsewhere being given time, one of the many tropes of a Guardiola press conference. So too are the ‘we train later’ responses to injury questions, the utter rejection of incoming transfer speculation, his 100mph responses and the infuriating habit of not speaking in full sentences.

After one particular press conference, a cohort of confused journalists convened to decide whether Guardiola had said ‘live’ or ‘love’, both of which would have drastically altered his answer.

The former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss is also not adverse to a playful dig being worked into his replies. In the last few months alone he’s fired back at Jose Mourinho, Mikel Arteta, Lee Carsley and Gary Neville.

Guardiola has even been known to chuck in the odd subtle criticism of his own players. Praising those who played through injury last month was seen by many as a thinly veiled dig at certain members of his squad, while his fury at Jack Grealish’s England call-up left less to the imagination.

There were others: Telling Raheem Sterling that he was ‘free to make the best decision for him’ was a prelude to his exit the following summer, and the criticism that Riyad Mahrez had to be ‘fit in all his ways with the body fat and everything’ was a clear hint at why the Algerian wasn’t starting at the time.

He’s also never shy to remind everyone that City’s rivals have spent more money in recent years - another example of him very much toeing the party line - while Guardiola’s sarcastic response to Zlatan Ibrahimovic's claims about his ego caused another mini media storm in November 2022.

“In this club, in this team, my ego is beyond every other person, every player,” he said sardonically. “I don’t like it when Erling scores three goals, and all the highlight is for him. I am so jealous. Honestly, so jealous. I said ‘Erling, please no more goals, otherwise the Sun and Daily Mail won’t talk about me’.”

Thin line between genius and madness

The press conference is Guardiola’s playground, he uses it to create his preferred narrative. The six-time Premier League winner has a penchant for answering the question he wants, rather than what was asked, and trivial queries can often be greeted with long, frenzied monologues. There’s nothing quite like being on the end of one, nodding along awkwardly as the world’s greatest manager essentially uses you as a sounding board, eyes boring into you, arms flailing, rhetorical questions left unanswered.

One memorable reply came in March 2023, when a question about City’s failure to win the Champions League elicited a long-winded reply about how nothing would compare to the disappointment of Julian Roberts snubbing the team.

You never can quite tell where a Guardiola press conference will go. Just a month prior he cut the press officer off before the first question to issue an apology to Steven Gerrard. There is a thin line between genius and madness, after all.

And genius is undoubtedly what Guardiola is. It’s why his opinion - be it on VAR, the fixture schedule or the transfer window - carries such weight. He’s managed Lionel Messi, Andreas Iniesta, Thierry Henry, Philipp Lahm and Kevin De Bruyne - that brings a certain level of authority. Now, Guardiola’s burgeoning managerial disciples underline his influence on the game, with Arteta, Enzo Maresca, Vincent Kompany and Xabi Alonso among the legions of coaches whose football ideology has been shaped by Guardiola.

Covering City on a weekly basis also exposes the utter lunacy of the manager’s thinking. He hasn’t signed a left-back since 2020, played 18 months without a recognised striker and won successive titles with a relatively undersized squad. And yet it always seems to work. Watching Guardiola on the sidelines is also a unique brand of entertainment. The jumping, grabbing his head, falling to the ground - you’d be forgiven for thinking his side can’t complete a 10-yard pass.

Ironically, a habit of making basic mistakes has been a recurring theme of recent weeks in this astronomic downturn in form, making the time of this Pep pean a tad unusual. The reason is that City’s match today (Sunday) is my final as a club correspondent.

City might not be the world’s best team right now, but for the majority of my three and a half years covering the club they have very much been the globe’s preeminent club. That’s all down to Guardiola’s genius.

City will be back. I know it. You know. Everyone knows it. But how much time we have left of Guardiola in this division feels less certain. This was so close to being his final year in England, but the decision to sign a new contract last month kicks that particular can down the road for now.

It is coming though, as Guardiola’s comments this week about the toll management takes on him and City being his last club job revealed. So enjoy him while you can, because football’s greatest mind won’t be here for much longer.