Manchester City football club boss, Pep Guardiola, oversaw his 700th game as manager on 5 December and has now revealed that before retirement, he wants to oversee 700 more.
The 49-year-old Spaniard explained his future plans before Manchester City’s game with Fulham at a press conference, saying, "700 games, and I’m going to do 700 more. And after that, I’m going to retire. So, good. In life, when you start something, you don’t expect what will happen in the future and I never expected it."
Pep - who is regarded as one of the best football mangers in the world today - explained that, “it’s good to have 700 games with few defeats in these games. For all the players and staff we had in the Barcelona B team, first team, Bayern and here, we share it. It is an incredible number with all the people we were with. Hopefully, we can do it in the future.”
On Saturday 28 November, Manchester City beat Burnley 5-0, which marked Pep’s 248th game as manager of the club, which means he's passed the amount of time he spent at Sou Camp overseeing Barcelona.
As of late, Pep has also shown that he is willing to get tough with his players who don’t perform - even those with strong reputations - to score those much-coveted victories.
French centre-back Aymeric Laporte was thought of as the best defender at Manchester City last season. However, Pep has kept the 26-year-old out of the past three matches.
The same can be said for last term’s goal-scorer-in-chief - 31-year-old Raheem Sterling - who also found himself on the bench during 28 November’s match between Manchester City and Burnley.
Guardiola explained his reasoning behind keeping those famous players on the benches.
“There is a misunderstanding about the word rotation. Rotation looks like ‘I’m a big star and I don’t play this game because I’m going to play the next game and it’s important’. This is a huge mistake for the players to make. They have to understand that if I don’t play them because of rotation, they have to do more to play in this team,” he said. “Riyad Mahrez scored three goals against Burnley and on Saturday he’s going to play - because he scored a lot of goals. The guys who score goals are going to have more chance to play. The guys who don’t make mistakes behind are going to play. This is about the performance,” Pep added.
