MANCHESTER: Pep Guardiola has been advised to leave Manchester City by one of his most trusted individuals.
Guardiola’s former performance analyst, Carles Planchart, said the manager needed to take a break to ‘regenerate himself’ before looking for a ‘new project’.
The pair worked together at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City before Planchart left his role last season.
As someone who has worked with Guardiola for 18 years, Planchart believes that Guardiola needs to step back for a while if he wants to extend his coaching career.
Guardiola’s contract expires in 2027 and he has previously expressed his desire to take a break after leaving the Etihad Stadium – perhaps for up to ’15 years’, an indication that the daily pressures of being a manager are starting to become a burden like what happened to Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool.
“It’s a personal decision he has to make. I think a project should last five or six years, no more than that,” Planchart told SPORT.
“But not just for him, but for everyone. After that, you need to regenerate yourself. As a friend, I would advise him to find a new project because he still has a long future.
“The main reason he’s been at City all this time is because they treat us like family, we’re allowed to work as if we were at home. He didn’t feel that way at Barca or Bayern.
“He was a football fanatic. His life was on the pitch. He was a genius, an inventor.
“His main strength is how he creates football. The hardest thing in life is to create; others just imitate. He is number one in this.”