ITALY PERSPECTIVE

Rome, May 23, 2026. The announcement came through a statement on the club's social media: Pep Guardiola will leave his post as Manchester City coach at the end of the current season, after ten years of transforming a provincial English club into a continental title machine. The news had been in the air for several months, but the officialization still produced a certain effect in the Italian press, which focuses extensively on the numbers of an unprecedented reign.

Panorama summarizes it in a lapidary formula: Guardiola has 'won a lot, spent a lot.' Twenty trophies in ten years, including six Premier League titles (from 2017 to 2024, with the sole exception of 2019-2020), three FA Cup, six English League Cup, three Community Shield — and, above all, the first and only Champions League title in the club's history, won in the final against Inter under Simone Inzaghi in Istanbul. This title remains the inescapable reference point for the Italian press, which cannot help but recall that this victory was also the most cruel defeat for the nerazzurri in recent years.

In terms of finance, the Milanese review cites Transfermarkt to establish that Manchester City has swallowed over 2 billion euros in player purchases under the Guardiola era. An astronomical sum that the Catalan would have been able to 'transform into a spectacle and results on the field,' according to the magazine. This unprecedented financial support from the Emirati ownership is presented as one of the structural conditions of success, even if the question of the 115 suspected infractions of Premier League financial rules — still under investigation — hangs in the background without being developed in the article.

Guardiola, for his part, chose to take his leave with an open letter to the fans, whose extracts are reproduced extensively by the Italian press. The Catalan coach mentions his arrival in 2016, a first interview with Noel Gallagher ('I got out thinking: 'Okay... Noel is here? It will be fun'), the Manchester Arena tragedy, his mother's death during the Covid, and the loyalty of the tifosi in difficult times. 'Nothing is eternal, if it were, I would still be here,' he writes, before concluding: 'Eternal, however, will be the feelings, people, memories, love I have for my Manchester City.' An emotional register that contrasts with the coldness of financial balances, and which the transalpine press reproduces without critical distance.

Despite an exceptional palmarès, the last season was decidedly more difficult than the previous ones.