What Price is Manchester City Manager Pep Guardiola Worth?

Pep Guardiola has successfully reshaped the Manchester City side in his own image and they stand ready to embark upon a golden period in their history.

When Pep Guardiola joined Manchester City on 1 July 2016 it was the culmination of a number of years of patient building by the City Football Group. They had searched for the ideal candidate capable of fulfilling the mandate to play attractive attacking football and had then waited for him to become available. Of course during the wait, they courted him but they have made it clear the project at Manchester City would provide him with security and no interference.

After a difficult period at Bayern Munich the prospect of non interference especially was reportedly of interest to Guardiola. Being in an environment focussed on football and protected from political machinations at the Club would allow Guardiola to focus upon coaching. Of course at the City Football Group the idea of protecting Guardiola and insulating him from the pressures which debilitated him at Barcelona and Bayern Munich are part of the plan.

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The hope is by protecting Guardiola they can convince him to stay for longer and really take the once in a lifetime opportunity to develop a real legacy – by shaping a whole club for the long term. The plan is to try and keep Guardiola at Manchester City for as long as he wishes to stay. He has already signed one contract extension and is currently committed at the club until June 2021. The hope is that he will extend his stay even further. Certainly some of the noises emanating from the Guardiola camp appear interested – suggesting he may be open to another couple of years.

So far in his illustrious managerial career he has won an incredible 27 trophies to date and will hopefully add at least a couple more this season! Not bad considering as a player the sum transfer total of all his moves was just £585K.

So what price is Guardiola worth to a club as a manager? If even the most average top level player is commanding a fee in excess of £20 million then having the World’s best coach must be worth an almost immeasurable amount. It is rumoured that Guardiola earns around the highest salary for a football manager some £15 million a year but even this is dwarfed by the kind of value added to a club through winning major trophies.

Given the idea behind appointing Guardiola is about creating a lasting legacy it is not a surprise that there are some concerted attempts behind in the background to try and thwart the ambition. The UEFA FFP fiasco rumbles on with a clear mission to distort and limit the Manchester City legacy. If this does not derail the steamroller that is the City Football Group then the reserve measure appears to be the FIFA possible transfer embargo.

Given City are in the position of needing to strengthen a couple of key positions within their team then it is possible a transfer ban would seriously derail their bid for dominance just at the point they were exhibiting a strangle hold.

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So the question really is whether the attempts to throttle the legacy will make Guardiola retreat into another managerial position or commit further in the belief it will take a couple of years longer to really cement this Manchester City project. Either way, the value of Guardiola has gone up at Manchester City. He has done what all of the media said could not be done. He has changed English football and the value of that may just well be priceless.

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