Pep Guardiola: Barcelona legend who found a home at Manchester City still going strong after 1,000 games

The City coach celebrated in style as his side produced their best performance of the season to thrash Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium

Pep Guardiola salutes the Manchester City fans after the Premier League win over Liverpool. Getty Images

Flags in support of Catalan independence hung from the second tier of a football stadium in Manchester, England. In between read the message, “Pep Guardiola – Volem Que Et Quedis”. It means, “Pep Guardiola, we want you to stay” in Catalan.

At the opposite end of Manchester City's Etihad Stadium, a double tifo read “Guardiola” in massive 10-metre letters, with an image of his face replacing the ‘O’. Opposite the main stand was the longest flag of all, reading: “We’ve Got Guardiola – 1,000 games.”

That’s 1,000 games as a professional football manager, to add to more than 500 he played on the pitch, most as a cultured holding midfielder in great sides for the club he has supported all his life – FC Barcelona.

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Sir Alex Ferguson rated Guardiola highly as a player, once giving Nicky Butt specific instructions to squeeze the area he played in a Champions League game. It didn’t work. Barcelona won 4-0.

City's 3-0 win against Liverpool on Sunday, which lifted his side into second thanks to Erling Haaland’s header, Nico Gonzalez’s deflected strike, and Jeremy Doku’s outstanding right-footed shot, was Guardiola’s 550th as City coach.

It was the first time City defeated Liverpool in two-and-a-half years and Guardiola had won only six of the previous 24 games against them.

As the seventh win came, also City’s seventh consecutive home win, he was expressive in the heavy Mancunian rain, prowling his area and interacting with nearby spectators as his team enjoyed their best performance of the season.

City and Liverpool have won the last eight Premier League titles between them. Both need to chase down Arsenal, four points clear at the top. Guardiola’s team showed up on a big day for their boss, while it was Liverpool’s fifth league defeat in six.

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  Erling Haaland celebrates scoring Manchester City's first goal in their 3-0 Premier League win over Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium on November 9, 2025. Reuters

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  Man of the match Jeremy Doku scores Manchester City's third goal. EPA

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  Erling Haaland heads home to put Manchester City 1-0 up. Getty Images

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  Jeremy Doku celebrates scoring his Manchester City's third goal. Getty Images

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  Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk of Liverpool reacts to a challenge by Bernardo Silva of Manchester City. Getty Images

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  Referee Chris Kavanagh looks at the pitchside monitor before awarding Manchester City a penalty. AFP

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  Nico Gonzalez celebrates scoring Manchester City's second goal. Getty Images

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  Liverpool attacker Mohamed Salah is challenged by Ruben Dias and Gianluigi Donnarumma of Manchester City. Getty Images

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  City striker Erling Haaland misses from the spot against Liverpool. Getty Images

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  Virgil van Dijk scores for Liverpool but the goal was disallowed for offside. Reuters

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  Liverpool goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili saves Manchester City striker Erling Haaland's penalty. Reuters

“Thank you to the players and staff for giving me an incredible present against the most important opponent we faced in my time here,” he said. “It has been a special night with my kids here.”

But his story as a coach is not only about what he’s done in Manchester. He grew up in Santpedor, where there’s not much to attract a tourist, a largely working class town of 6,000 people located 73 kilometres north-east of Barcelona. Its brightest young people, like Guardiola, leave for Barcelona. Just not usually to play for Barcelona.

A student of Johan Cruyff’s philosophy, both as a player and coach, he was made at the Camp Nou, where he’d coach the first team for 247 games, then Bayern Munich for 161 more.

But the side he led for the fewest matches was Barcelona’s B team, for just one season, and 42 games in 2007-08. He was 36 when he started his managerial career in Spain’s regional fourth tier.

Barca B – or Barcelona Atletic as they are now known – had played second and third tier football in Spain for 35 years until 2007, the year Guardiola took over. His playing career finished in 2005; the year he trialled unsuccessfully at Manchester City.

When Guardiola became coach, the team had dropped to the fourth level, playing on dirt pitches at clubs that averaged 400 fans per game. Guardiola would stun opponents by turning up to scout them in person with his assistant Tito Vilanova, who followed him all the way and eventually replaced him as Barcelona boss before dying in 2014, aged 45, having suffered from throat cancer.

Guardiola would give chances to promising youngsters like Sergio Busquets. “It was a great experience because we’d been relegated to Tercer (the fourth level),” said Busquets.

“Pep was manager and we’d go to little Catalan towns where everyone wants to shoot you down because you played for Barca. I remember one game at Rapitenca in a tiny stadium in the south of Catalonia near the Ebro Delta. The people were shouting all kinds of abuse at us, as were the other players. Most of us were 18, 19, playing against 34-year-old men who wished they’d played for Barca.”

Guardiola was hardly any older and fiercely protective of his players. “It didn’t intimidate me,” said Busquets. “I don’t mind that part of the game. In fact I quite like an aggressive game – I’m from a barrio so I was not scared playing down there, but some of the other players were nervous after the first challenges went in.”

Despite a few early hiccups, Guardiola’s charges ended up top of Tercera Division. They won with 83 points and were promoted, not that he could stay with them. The club president met him one day and asked him to coach Barcelona’s first team.

“You won’t have the b***s,” Guardiola replied when it was proposed he replaced the departing Frank Rijkaard. It was an inspired choice and the new boss was an unqualified success, turning Barca into a winning machine playing the attacking, passing football first instilled by his former master Cruyff.

Guardiola’s flawless Catalan credentials led cynics to label him “the myth” – as in he’s so perfect that he can’t be true. He was obsessed with work and operated out of a spartan office with a solitary picture of his wife and kids above his old generation iPad. His attention to detail about his own side and future opponents was obsessive, but he carried his players with him.

“Pep helped me enormously,” said Busquets. “I’d played a year under him for the B team and then he promoted me straight to the first team in 2008. Right from the first pre-season games in Scotland, he showed absolute faith in me.

“He gave me lots of minutes and I played almost every game despite there being very good footballers in my position. He told me to enjoy myself and not to get nervous. He said there was no pressure because I was good enough to play for Barca. I was lucky that everything went well for me from the start. We won the treble at the end of my first season”.

Barcelona won all six trophies in that 2008-09 season, including clinching the treble against Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in the Champions League final. After Ferguson retired, the lads who had been at Barcelona together: Guardiola, Luis Enrique and Jose Mourinho would become the best coaches in football.

On Sunday, Guardiola stood getting soaked by the rain, 1,000 games to his name.

He’s aged, the stress of the job does that. The Stone Island jumpers have been replaced by those of City sponsors CP Company, but he’s still only 54. As the fans celebrated, they sang: “We’ve got Guardiola.” He led a parade around the pitch, smiling, a little emotional.