Reports coming out of Germany and Spain on Wednesday all seemed to point in the same direction – Pep Guardiola will announce soon he is leaving Bayern Munich at the end of the season.
From Spain's Marca, who ran a headline reading, "Pep Guardiola asks for the bill" to the more succinct German daily Sport Bild who splashed "Guardiola has decided!" at the top of their report, all signs, now, point to Guardiola's departure from the German champions.
Manchester City are considered the favourites for Guardiola's services, with Marca specifically mentioning Man City under their headline and Sport Bild mentioning the club is "considered as a potential new employer".
The German magazine Kicker wrote Guardiola's decision is "an open secret" in European football circles, and said the Marca report was "well-founded". That report labelled Manchester City a "bridge to his arrival to the Premier League".
The 44-year-old former Barcelona manager has led Bayern Munich to successive Bundesliga titles. The club have widely been reported to be willing to go to whatever lengths it takes to keep Guardiola in Bavaria. "We enjoy working with our coach and we really, really want to keep doing so," club captain Philipp Lahm said earlier this week.
Marca reported he was turning down promises of €20 million (Dh80m) per season.
It is presumed, though, that in part the ease with which Bayern dominate the German football landscape has led Guardiola into feeling stagnant.
He will run into no such trouble in England, where the Premier League is enjoying one of its most wide-open seasons in years, as the likes of Leicester City and Crystal Palace threaten for top-four places.
City, meanwhile, are third and very much in a position to win the title, but have at times lacked a cutting edge under manager Manuel Pellegrini. Management also have long targeted better Champions League results, to cap the club’s rise into Europe’s elite.
Such are the expectations that would fall on Guardiola’s shoulders should he arrive in Manchester. They won’t be unfamiliar for the Catalan, however, nor should they seem particularly outsized for a man who famously led Barcelona at their tiki-taka apex to to a six-trophy year in 2009. It was during that spell that he worked alongside Txiki Begiristain, now City’s director of footballl, and Ferran Soriano, the club’s chief executive.
Chelsea, with Jose Mourinho’s future in doubt, has been batted around as a possible destination, as has Manchester United, where Louis van Gaal has led an underwhelming campaign this season.
Guardiola himself promised "clarity" after Bayern's Bundesliga win over Darmstadt on Tuesday night. Sport Bild reported it would be officially announced after the team's final match before the Christmas break, at Hannover on Saturday.
Marca reported on Wednesday Guardiola, in leaving, wanted to seek “new horizons”. It appears that soon it will be clear just where those horizons lie.
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