Pep Guardiola to take City Football Group role after Manchester City exit

Pep Guardiola is set to leave Manchester City after Sunday's Premier League match against Aston Villa, his final game after a decade at the club. The bigger point is that this is being framed less as a clean break than a handover, with Guardiola moving into a City Football Group ambassador role that keeps him working around the same football empire.

The deal was originally set to run until summer 2027, but he has negotiated a departure 12 months ahead of schedule. Guardiola put the timing in plain terms, saying: "Don't ask me the reasons I'm leaving. There is no reason, but deep inside, I know it's my time."

Why this is a City group transition, not a full farewell

His new role will involve giving technical advice to clubs in the group and working on specific projects and collaborations. Ferran Soriano summed up the scale of the exit from the club side, saying: "Pep's legacy is extraordinary and its true impact will be better assessed by Manchester City historians of the future."

Guardiola has delivered 20 trophy victories at Manchester City, including six Premier League titles. His spell also included the treble of Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League in 2023, a domestic treble in 2019, and that 100-point league season in 2018. Those are the marks that explain why this does not feel like a routine departure.

Sunday will still feel like a proper send-off

The Aston Villa game has been turned into a farewell night, and there is some genuine scale to it. City's new North Stand has more than 7,000 extra seats in its second tier as part of a £300 million revamp, and it is expected to help set a stadium attendance record of over 60,000.

The match itself still matters on the pitch. City finish second in the Premier League on 77 points, with final five league results of WWDWW. Aston Villa finish fourth on 62 points and arrive on a WDLLW run, so this is not a staged lap of honour against weak opposition. Bernardo Silva and John Stones are also set for farewells, which should make the night feel more like the end of a proper cycle than a single manager's goodbye.

What happens next is straightforward enough: Sunday closes Guardiola's decade in the dugout, while his City Football Group role keeps him inside the organisation he helped define.