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Soccer’s worst-kept secret finally came out at the end of last week: Pep Guardiola’s reign as Manchester City’s manager was coming to an end after nearly 10 brilliant years. But any hopes that this announcement would spur City to one last Premier League title push were quickly quashed when City drew with Bournemouth, allowing Arsenal to clinch the title.
After 21 trophies in 10 seasons, however, one more might have seemed superfluous. Guardiola is the Premier League’s second-most successful manager behind only Sir Alex Ferguson, and his influence on the game surpasses even his successes.
Guardiola is the rarest of sports figures. He defined an entire era of the game, but he was obsessed with figuring out where the game would head next. His positional, heavy-possession style became the default template for basically every rich club in Europe — including the three he coached, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Man City — but as the game adapted to his innovation, he was fervent in adapting to the adaptations. As disciplined as he required his players to be in their assignments, by the end of his time in Manchester, he had acquired maybe the deepest set of dribblers and one-vs.-one maestros in Europe.
He was guilty of overthinking at times, and it probably cost him a Champions League title or two. (Real Madrid and the away goals rule also probably cost him a few.) But most of sport’s famous system-builders failed to expand beyond their system. Guardiola could seemingly think of nothing but that expansion.
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Guardiola’s legacy will be impacted to some degree by any eventual decision on City’s 115 charges of financial misconduct — at this point, it’s fair to wonder if a decision will ever come — but he was already an all-time great when he arrived in Manchester, and his overall impact on the game is untouchable.
Obviously, this isn’t the end. At only 55 years old, Guardiola could easily have at least a couple of stops left in his career if he chooses. But while we wait to find out how his next act will unfold — and how likely successor Enzo Maresca will fare in his shadow — let’s reflect. The best way to think about the effects of someone’s career is to walk back through it, and the most fun way to do that is by ranking something.
So here are Guardiola’s 18 managerial seasons to date, ranked.
Pep Guardiola has won trophies wherever he has gone. Getty1. 2010-11 BarcelonaLeague Points Per Game (PPG): 2.53 (first)
Champions League performance: Champions
Trophies: Champions League, La Liga, Supercopa de EspanaA great movie trilogy tends to take on a “rise, fall and rise again” sequence. Granted, Guardiola later expressed regret that he stayed at Barcelona for another sequel — er, season after 2010-11, but his third year leading Barcelona certainly fulfilled the narrative arc.Barca’s 2010-11 campaign was nearly perfect, marred only by a loss in extra time to Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey final. But even that loss served a narrative function: It was the second of the famous run of four El Clasico matchups in 18 days. It was a blip between a 1-1 draw in league play — which maintained Barca’s eight-point lead and all but assured them of another league title — and the two-legged Champions League semifinal tie, in which Barca would also prevail.
Real Madrid’s hire of Mourinho, whose Inter Milan had toppled Barca the year before in the Champions League semifinals, gave Guardiola a true rival at or near his level for one of only two times in his 18 managerial seasons. But as with Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, Guardiola beat his rivals for the major trophies more often than not.
Barca went 32 matches unbeaten in league play — a run that included a 5-0 pasting of Real Madrid in November — and lost only once in 13 Champions League matches. After a 3-1 loss to Barca in the final, Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson called Barcelona “the best team I’ve faced.”
It was probably the best team Guardiola coached, too.
2. 2008-09 BarcelonaLeague PPG: 2.29 (first)
Champions League performance: champions
Trophies: Champions League, La Liga, Copa del ReyThe first successful journey will always be remembered with particular fondness. Guardiola was a starting midfielder for Barcelona’s first ever European Cup win in 1992 and just over 16 years later, he took the reins as manager and immediately led them to another European title.Not bad for what was supposed to be a reset year.After a disappointing third-place finish in LaLiga in 2007-08, Barca fired Champions League-winning manager Frank Rijkaard and sold the rights to veterans Ronaldinho (AC Milan) and Deco (Chelsea), among others. They acquired Dani Alves (25) from Sevilla and Gerard Pique (21) from Manchester United and promoted Sergio Busquets (20) from the Barca B team; they also promoted their B-team coach, the recently retired Guardiola.
Things did not start particularly well: They were unconvincing in their Champions League qualification tie against Wisla Krakow, and they took just one point from LaLiga matches against Numancia and Racing Santander. But they would lose only twice over the next eight months. They won LaLiga by eight points despite winning only one of their last six league matches (as other possible trophies distracted them), and they toppled Atletico Madrid and rival Espanyol before a 4-1 romp in the Copa del Rey final. They also laid a 6-2 pounding on Real Madrid in an all-time “The world has changed, and this is the new way” match.
Four days after the blowout of Real Madrid, Andres Iniesta provided an iconic moment for the Guardiola oeuvre.
Iniesta’s stoppage-time goal allowed Barca to advance to the final in Rome, where they handled Manchester United with an early goal from Samuel Eto’o and a late goal from Lionel Messi. Guardiola’s top-division coaching career had begun with a treble. You can’t set the bar any higher than that.
3. 2022-23 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 2.34 (first)
Champions League performance: champions
Trophies: Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup
It took 12 years for Guardiola to finally win his third Champions League title despite absolute domination at two different clubs (City and Bayern), but he finally got it done in a nearly flawless season with a nearly flawless team. All it took was a trade of sorts: Raheem Sterling (to Chelsea) and Gabriel Jesus (Arsenal) out … and Borussia Dortmund’s Erling Haaland in.
Haaland scored 52 goals in all competitions with help from Kevin De Bruyne (10 goals and 28 assists, 12 to Haaland), while youngsters Phil Foden and Julián Álvarez and wingers Riyad Mahrez and Jack Grealish gave Guardiola endless options for creativity as Rodri completed his evolution into the best defensive midfielder in the world.
Guardiola’s City teams have become known for peaking late in the season, and this one set the template. They wobbled midseason, and Arsenal, led by former Guardiola protege Mikel Arteta, actually led the Premier League for 248 days. But a 25-match spring unbeaten streak allowed City to surge past a nervous Arsenal while also rolling to the FA Cup and Champions League finals. They beat Manchester United 2-1 in the former, with Gundogan delivering a brace at Wembley. Seven days later, they prevailed over Inter Milan in Istanbul as well.
They were far from great, but Rodri’s 68th-minute cannonball delivered City its first and only treble. The party lasted for days.
4. 2013-14 Bayern MunichLeague PPG: 2.65 (first)
Champions League performance: semifinals
Trophies: UEFA Super Cup, FIFA Club World Cup, Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal
Between his runs at Barca and City came a three-year Bayern tenure loaded with domination and regret. The former is what gets his first season ranked this high. It seemed almost unfair allowing the most celebrated manager in the world, refreshed after a year off, to take over a Bayern team that had just won the Champions League (and would soon provide most of the stars for Germany’s 2014 World Cup winner).
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After an early reality-check loss to Borussia Dortmund in the DFL-Supercup — a portend of the future in a couple of ways, in that Jurgen Klopp was BVB’s manager and Gundogan scored the winning goal — Bayern ignited in a way that even Bayern have rarely matched. They would lose only one more match until April.
It’s been stated Bayern’s dominance was so great that it ended up backfiring on them. As Marti Perarnau detailed in Pep Confidential: The Inside Story of Pep Guardiola’s First Season at Bayern Munich, his team clinched the Bundesliga title with seven matches to go and eased off the throttle. They won only one of five matches in an early-April stretch and got walloped 3-0 by Klopp’s Dortmund.
“There is one thing I am sure of,” Guardiola told Perarnau. “I messed up. We thought we were the greatest and our decline started that day in Berlin [when they won the Bundesliga]. It hasn’t been a gentle decline, no, we’ve gone right off the rails.”
Days later, they would lose to Real Madrid in the Champions League semifinals. The seeds for all of City’s great spring charges were planted in Munich in 2014, but maybe no single Guardiola team had a higher ceiling than this Bayern outfit.
5. 2017-18 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 2.63 (first)
Champions League performance: quarterfinals
Trophies: Premier League, League Cup
You can easily make a case that this season should rank the highest from Guardiola’s City tenure. Even if they fell short in the Champions League, they were still the only Premier League team to reach 100 points in a season. And they got to stuff it in the face of snide skeptics who thought there was no way he could dominate in England to this degree.
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After a wonky debut year in Manchester, Guardiola had what he needed. City added three players who would become Guardiola stalwarts in the years to come — Bernardo Silva (from Monaco), Éderson (Benfica), Kyle Walker (Tottenham Hotspur) — and he adjusted to the Premier League far better than it adjusted to him.
City ranked first in goals (106), goals allowed (27), possession rate (71.2%), pass completion rate (89.0%), passes per possession (8.5), progressive carries (112.7 per game), progressive passes (81.9) and every other category that has become tied to proper possession dominance. Meanwhile, Sergio Aguero, Raheem Sterling, Leroy Sané and Kevin De Bruyne all produced at least 30 combined goals and assists in all competitions.
The only hiccups came in cup play. City won the League Cup with a 3-0 romp over Arsenal, but they slipped up at Wigan (of all teams) in the FA Cup and after losing 4-3 to Klopp’s Liverpool in league play in January — one of only two league losses all year — they fell again to the Reds in the Champions League quarterfinals. Liverpool would go on to reach the finals.
In both Germany and England, Guardiola won far more than Klopp overall, but Klopp usurped him in quite a few key moments.
6. 2009-10 BarcelonaLeague PPG: 2.61 (first)
Champions League performance: semifinals
Trophies: FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup, La Liga, Supercopa de Espana
This could only look disappointing compared to the years before and after it. In 2009-10, Real Madrid produced 96 points, four more than any LaLiga team had to date, and they finished second in the league behind a Barcelona team that produced 99. They lost one league match (2-1 at Atletico Madrid in February) and were eliminated from the Copa del Rey only because of the away goals rule. They dominated Spain to a degree that no one really had before as Messi found a new gear, scoring 47 goals in all competitions.
But … they lost to Mourinho’s Inter in Europe. After getting a taste of Guardiola ball in the group stage — Inter and Barca drew 0-0 in Milan, with Barca winning 2-0 at home — Mourinho produced one of his finest results when Inter toasted Barca 3-1 in the first leg of the semifinals, then closed up shop in a way that almost redefined the term. In the second leg, Inter had the ball just 13.6% of the time and attempted one shot, but they kept Barca scoreless until a Pique goal in the 84th minute.
Inter held on and advanced to the final, where they beat Guardiola’s future team, Bayern, 2-0, in Madrid. Then Real Madrid signed Mourinho and ignited what was already one of the sport’s most tempestuous rivalries.
7. 2018-19 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 2.58 (first)
Champions League performance: quarterfinals
Trophies: Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup, Community Shield
In perhaps the greatest two-team race in Premier League history, City had to work overtime to fend off Klopp’s Liverpool in 2018-19, earning 98 points to the Reds’ 97 and winning their last 14 league matches of the season to take the crown.
The 13th of those 14 is probably the most memorable thanks to Vincent Kompany:
City completed a domestic treble as well, sweeping through the FA Cup with ease and beating Chelsea in penalties in the final of the League Cup. Including the Community Shield against Chelsea, they played 51 domestic matches that season, winning 43, drawing four and losing only four. Ridiculous.It was a somewhat tragic twist, then, that a domestic team knocked them out in the Champions League quarterfinals for the second straight year. Thanks to a late Son Heung-Min goal, Tottenham Hotspur beat them 1-0 in London in the first leg, then survived a wild second leg with a late goal from Fernando Llorente; City won 4-3, but Spurs advanced on away goals and ended up falling in the finals to Klopp’s Liverpool.
8. 2007-08 Barcelona BLeague PPG: 2.18 (first)
Trophies: Tercera Division
Guardiola finished his on-field career in 2006, playing for future assistant Juanma Lillo in a short stint with Liga MX’s Dorados. The next year, he was back with his longtime club, coaching the B-team in Spain’s fourth division. With the late Tito Vilanova and future New York City FC manager Domenec Torrent as his assistants, and with a squad featuring future Guardiola stars like Busquets, Thiago Alcantara and Pedro, Guardiola led Barca B to promotion with a first-place finish in the Catalonia group of the Tercera Division and with aggregate wins over Castillo CF and UD Barbastro in the promotion playoffs.
According to an Athletic piece on Guardiola’s season with Barca B, Barcelona president Joan Laporta visited Guardiola at the hospital in April 2008, following the birth of Guardiola’s third child. Laporta told Guardiola that he was considering naming the former Barca midfielder manager of the senior team; “You won’t have the b—s,” Guardiola supposedly replied.
Evidently Laporta did, in fact, have them.
9. 2021-22 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 2.45 (first)
Champions League performance: semifinals
Trophies: Premier League
The last great Guardiola vs. Klopp battle forced City to once again play nearly perfect ball down the stretch. Liverpool didn’t lose a league game after December 28 and dropped only four points in their last 17 matches, but with only three losses all season, City still held a one-point lead heading into their final match of the season, at home against Aston Villa.
With 15 minutes left, however, Villa held a 2-0 lead.
In a five-minute span, goals from Gundogan, Rodri and Gundogan crushed Liverpool’s hopes. They also redeemed a season that had been otherwise frustrating — City had bowed out quickly in both domestic tournaments and had fallen to Real Madrid in a dramatic semifinal.10. 2015-16 Bayern MunichLeague PPG: 2.59 (first)
Champions League performance: semifinals
Trophies: Bundesliga, DFB-PokalIn 2013-14, perhaps only Real Madrid could have beaten Guardiola’s Bayern, and the two teams met in the semifinals. In 2014-15, Luis Enrique’s Barcelona were the only team in the world better than Bayern, but Bayern were unlucky enough to face them in the semis, too. In 2015-16, with Guardiola’s impending departure verified, the runway appeared clear. Real Madrid weren’t quite as strong, and Barcelona had been upset by Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid in the quarterfinals.This was Bayern’s chance to win the biggest prize with the biggest manager; instead, Atletico painted a Simeone masterpiece.After winning the first leg, 1-0, they trailed by the same score in Munich when Jan Oblak saved a Thomas Müller penalty that would have put Bayern in control. Early in the second half, Antoine Griezmann scored on a one-man counter-attack, and despite an absolute deluge of late chances (and a goal from Robert Lewandowski), Bayern could only win 2-1, and Atletico advanced on away goals. If only UEFA had stopped using away goals as a tiebreaker a decade earlier.
It feels odd to boil an entire season down to one match, but with Bayern again rolling to the Bundesliga title (with only two league defeats) and eventually beating Borussia Dortmund for the DFB-Pokal as well, Guardiola’s final season was all about the Champions League pursuit, and it again ended one match short of the final.
But, I guess, we did get the most perfect nine minutes of Guardiola’s career, at least:
11. 2020-21 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 2.26 (first)
Champions League performance: finals
Trophies: Premier League, League CupFifteen consecutive league wins, 21 straight overall and 28 straight unbeaten. In the middle of 2020-21, a season in which nothing really went as planned and his center-forwards struggled to stay healthy, Guardiola pulled off a magic act. Gundogan, very much a midfielder, briefly became an unstoppable goal-scorer, everyone’s roles got tweaked in some way, and Manchester City took down all comers for three months.The run allowed them to overcome a poor start to the season and prompted pushes to the League Cup final (won) and FA Cup semifinal (lost) and, eventually, the Champions League final. They fell in Porto to Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea after Guardiola offered a rather strange lineup, with Gundogan suddenly playing a defensive midfield role instead of Rodri or Fernandinho. But after the finesse he showed for much of the season, you couldn’t blame Guardiola for taking a big swing.
12. 2023-24 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 2.39 (first)
Champions League performance: quarterfinals
Trophies: Premier League, UEFA Super Cup, FIFA Club World Cup
This was the last of Guardiola’s City title seasons, and it once again required a spring charge. After a 1-0 loss to Villa in December — their fourth straight league match without a win — City found themselves in fourth place, seven points behind Liverpool and six behind Arsenal. While Liverpool would fade a hair, Arsenal would average 2.30 points per game from there, a title pace in its own right. But City went unbeaten in their final 23 matches.
Pep Guardiola ends his final Manchester City press conference after a decade at the club with a round of applause.
After a 0-0 draw with Arsenal on March 31, City were still in third. But they won their final nine matches by a combined 33-6, and a single loss from Arsenal (2-0 to Aston Villa) was all it took to flip the race in City’s favor. On his way to Premier League player-of-the-year honors, Phil Foden scored just 74 seconds into the final game of the season, and City rolled to a 3-1 win over West Ham to clinch a fourth consecutive title.
Aside from the two trophies they won that were associated with the previous year’s Champions League win, however, that was about it for City. They lost early in the League Cup, fell again to Real Madrid in the Champions League and lost to Manchester United in the FA Cup final. This was awfully good for a manager’s 12th-best season, but it may have delayed a necessary squad rebuild.
13. 2014-15 Bayern MunichLeague PPG: 2.32 (first)
Champions League performance: semifinals
Trophies: Bundesliga
For the second straight season, Guardiola’s Bayern peaked too early. Granted, it took them an extra month to clinch the Bundesliga this time, but after a romp through the fall and winter months, they once again failed to stick the landing.
Over a five-match span in late-April and early-May, they lost a shootout to Klopp’s final BVB team — to whom they had also lost in the early-season DFL-Supercup — in the DFB-Pokal semifinals, dropped two straight league matches after clinching and then fell 3-0 to Barcelona in the first leg of the Champions League semifinals. They played well in the second leg, but two Neymar goals in 15 minutes put the tie to bed and basically brought a one-trophy season in Munich to an underwhelming end.
14. 2011-12 BarcelonaLeague PPG: 2.39 (second)
Champions League performance: semifinals
Trophies: FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup, Copa del Rey, Supercopa de España
We had to go this far down to find a Guardiola team that didn’t win the league. Wow.
This Barca team lost only three league matches all season. They toppled Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey, before throttling Athletic Club in the final. They lost only one of 10 Champions League matches. Leo Messi scored 73 goals with 30 assists! In one season!
For a disappointing season that ended with Guardiola quitting and claiming burnout, it was ridiculously good.
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Still, Barca lost LaLiga by nine points to Mourinho’s transcendent and record-setting Real Madrid, and in need of a late goal against Chelsea (again because of away goals) in the Champions League semifinals, they instead gave up a famous breakaway goal to Fernando Torres. Guardiola left with one last win in the Copa del Rey, but the season was still tinged with disappointment, and he really was tapped out. Four years at Barca had aged him like an American presidential term.
As Sid Lowe wrote in Fear and Loathing in La Liga, “There was a weariness about him. The smile when he had noted that he was losing his hair disguised a serious message. … The game, which was everything but the game, had become relentless, twisted, and nasty. Even the things Guardiola did well could be held against him: ‘Maybe it’s true,’ he had stated, ‘maybe I do p— perfume.'”
15. 2025-26 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 2.11 (second)
Champions League performance: round of 16
Trophies: FA Cup, League Cup
When the 2024-25 season went to hell midway through — take your pick for the absolute lowest moment, but my vote has to go with the blown 3-0 lead against Feyenoord that led to Guardiola having to walk back self-harm comments — it prompted a delayed but extensive squad rebuild. Of the top 19 players in minutes played in all competitions this season, 10 had been added since January 2025, including assists leader Rayan Cherki and interceptions leader Abdukodir Khusanov.
The peaks have been exciting enough — 14 wins by three or more goals, clean sweeps of the two domestic cups — and newcomers like Cherki, Antoine Semenyo and Marc Guéhi have fit in particularly well. But droughts in form were damning: Back-to-back losses in August and November, two wins in seven matches in January, one win in five matches in March. They fell yet again to Real Madrid in the Champions League knockouts (it seems there was no other way for Guardiola’s tenure to end), and despite the typical April surge, they had lost too much ground to track Arsenal down this time.
16. 2019-20 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 2.13 (second)
Champions League performance: quarterfinals
Trophies: League Cup, Community Shield
The 2019-20 season was the point at which the Premier League (or maybe the general world of big-time soccer) adjusted at least a bit to City’s domination. Granted, they still finished second in the league behind a 99-point Liverpool, but City’s 81 points were their lowest total between 2017-18 and 2023-24, and they briefly mastered the art of dropping points because of momentary lapses in transition defense. They generated a positive xG differential in 54 of 59 contests but lost 12 overall matches and had their weird, Covid-postponed season end by giving up three goals in seven shots against Lyon in the Champions League quarterfinals.
Prolific attack? Check.
Ridiculous possession numbers? Check.
Balance slightly off compared to previous seasons? Check.
17. 2024-25 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 1.87 (third)
Champions League performance: round of 24
Trophies: Community Shield
At least it started and ended well.
City began their league campaign nine games unbeaten and finished 10 games unbeaten, as has been customary. They outscored their first three Champions League league phase opponents by a combined 9-0 at the start and reached the FA Cup final at the end. But without Ballon d’Or winner Rodri, who tore his ACL in August, and with a squad that desperately needed a refresh, adversity struck in November, and for the first time Guardiola really couldn’t come up with answers.
From Oct. 30 to Dec. 21, City played 13 games and won one of them. Then they lost four of six in February, too, falling desperately behind in the Premier League and departing in the new round of 24 in the Champions League (to Real Madrid, though that should go without saying at this point). Their late-season charge could only salvage third place in the Premier League, and they lost in stated FA Cup final to an inspired Crystal Palace.
The aura of inevitability that Guardiola and City had established was well and truly gone. They would rebound in 2025-26, but only so much.
18. 2016-17 Manchester CityLeague PPG: 2.05 (third)
Champions League performance: round of 16
Trophies: none
We’ll rank this last because it was Guardiola’s only trophy-less season and because it only felt so much like a Guardiola season.
The club did immediately spend big to grab key players like Gundogan, Sane and John Stones, and it proved willing to make fundamental changes to the roster by loaning out unwanted or problematic former stars like Joe Hart and Samir Nasri. City also won their first six league matches by a combined 18-5, which felt like quite the shot across the bow to all the pundits who thought the Premier League would humble Guardiola and prove him overrated in some regard.
Things grew trickier in the winter months, however, and City not only lost the league race to Chelsea by 15 points but also won only three of eight Champions League matches and fell to Monaco — via away goals, of course — in the round of 16. The skeptics got to feel good about themselves for a moment, but safe to say, Guardiola would win the war.
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