Guardiola’s relentless drive for perfection created dynasty at Manchester City | Jamie Jackson

Departing manager was the arch-plotter and tactician with his training ground work instrumental in leading the club to a decade of silverware

“What are your dreams, what are your dreams?” To comprehend what drove Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, his interaction with autograph hunters in January 2025 after an 8-0 FA Cup win over Salford City is instructive.

The group comprises all younger people apart from one man who tells him: “I used to be a chef.” Guardiola’s reply cuts to the quick and reads as a mantra heard surely by the 85 players he used in 10 Premier League seasons. “Continue to do it. Prepare better,” he says.

This ethos of improvement and perfection-seeking swept Guardiola’s City to the 2023 treble, the 2018 title with a record 100 points as part of a domestic treble, and to a historic four consecutive championships, the last of these a year after the winning Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup, when fatigue might have caused decline.

City have won 17 major honours across a decade under Guardiola, a ratio superior to that achieved by Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson.

Winning was intoxicating, Guardiola has said. But the Catalan’s deeper need was for the work – on the training ground, with the players, in strategising, in the shuffling of team selection, the scrutiny of the opposition.

This was Guardiola’s elixir, his drug. He was the arch-plotter, the tactician who fielded 349 different starting XIs in 378 Premier League games. He made 1,105 changes to starting lineups, excluding matches on a season’s opening day.

Guardiola was relentless and shrewd. He could rotate and keep City, for most of the time, a winning machine. He knew, too, how to deal with and recover from losses. He hated losing but could be magnanimous.

After the deep disappointment of losing on away goals to Tottenham in an April 2019 Champions League quarter-final, Guardiola was measured when discussing Fernando Llorente’s second-half goal and how Raheem Sterling’s injury-time strike was ruled out for Sergio Agüero’s offside.

“I support VAR but maybe from one angle Fernando Llorente’s goal is handball, maybe from the referee’s angle it is not,” he said. Of the Agüero decision, he said: “I am for fair football. The referees must be helped sometimes. When it is offside, it is offside. What can I say?”

Like any human being he could be sarcastic, snarky, cheesed off, warm and comical. And he loved a verbal spar, sometimes with this correspondent. Last Christmas, before answering a question, came a dry “nice jumper” quip regarding a festive item. “Nice shirt,” was offered when he spotted its Hawaiian theme at one Champions League away game.

After the 1-0 win over Chelsea in January 2023 Guardiola was pithy. “In the last press conference Jamie Jackson said: ‘Why did I make a substitution on 81 minutes against Everton?’ I took notes and I thought about him at half-time and I changed it at half-time.”

There was a puzzled expression when Guardiola was asked, before the trip to Tottenham for the penultimate game of the 2023-24 season, whether he would feel “squeaky bum time” as City pushed for a fourth title in a row. When City’s media officer explained that this meant “something happening”, Guardiola agreed that, yes, there would be nerves.

There was, of course, more serious business to navigate. In January 2023 Guardiola was moved to offload João Cancelo owing to the player’s questionable attitude at being rotated. A month later he had to digest then fend off related scrutiny, the news that the club had been issued with an estimated 134 charges in February 2023 over alleged financial wrongdoing, which City deny.

Guardiola had endured a trophyless opening campaign after the executive failed to replace the ageing full-backs Pablo Zabaleta and Gaël Clichy, and the stress at this leaked out via contretemps with more than one reporter. Guardiola apologised, an indicator of his intelligence and self-awareness.

The greatest negative of his reign came in May 2021 and was a defeat, a seismic one: the 1-0 Champions League final reverse against Chelsea, managed by Thomas Tuchel, an elite coach but not in Guardiola’s generational class.

That day, at Porto’s Estádio do Dragão, Guardiola dropped Rodri and failed to start Fernandinho, so the No 6 devotee/guru sent City out for the biggest game of their history without one. Chelsea had two: N’Golo Kanté and Jorginho.

There was no No 9, either, for City: Agüero, the all-time greatest scorer, was on the bench, Phil Foden and Riyad Mahrez were fielded as false forwards, and Tuchel emerged cock-a-hoop – El Cap was outfoxed.

Here the old charge of overthinking was levelled at Guardiola. There may have been truth in this, but maybe not: if Kevin De Bruyne had not sustained a nose and orbital fracture on the hour in a clash with Antonio Rüdiger, City might have answered Kai Havertz’s goal.

De Bruyne, the peerless schemer, was perhaps the finest of footballers who came under Guardiola’s east Manchester tutelage. Others included the Silvas, David and Bernardo, and John Stones, nominated by his manager as the player of the match in the Champions League final City did win, 1-0 against Inter in 2023. There was also Rodri, who scored the winner in that game in Istanbul and won the Ballon d’Or that year, plus Ederson, Agüero, Yaya Touré, Erling Haaland, Kyle Walker, Fernandinho, Vincent Kompany and, more recently, Antoine Semenyo, Marc Guéhi and Rayan Cherki.

Guardiola always said it was about the players: that without A-list acts success is impossible. He was correct, of course. But only half correct. To create a dynasty you also need a manager who is an all‑time great.

Guardiola, at City, proved he was.