“There’s still so much I could give to these players, but I can’t give them everything I’ve got,” Pep Guardiola told a trusted member of his backroom staff in the bowels of Camp Nou minutes after Barcelona’s heartbreaking loss to Chelsea in the Champions League in 2012.
It was this conversation that signaled the end of the Guardiola era in Catalunya. In the weeks that followed, words like fatigue, politics, and mistrust were thrown around to make sense of his sudden departure. It really wasn’t so complex. Pep has always been all in or nothing.
Four years on from that conversation, he dove headfirst into the Premier League, taking charge of Manchester City in 2016. Pep’s City: The Making of a Superteam chronicles Guardiola’s time so far in Manchester and a club that he has been able to give everything he’s got.
With a subject as rich as Guardiola, it’s easy to get lost in the glory of his past achievements. The writers, Lu Martin and Pol Ballús, find the right amount of restraint and smartly use his time at Barcelona and Munich to show how he’s evolved as a coach and leader.