Pep Guardiola's 10-year Man City reign to end — Maresca next

Pep Guardiola is poised to bring the curtain down on a decade in charge at Manchester City, with multiple outlets reporting the 55-year-old Catalan will announce his departure around Sunday’s final Premier League fixture of the 2025-26 season — a home tie against Aston Villa. The news, broken initially by Daily Mail columnist Oliver Holt and quickly corroborated by CBS Sports, NBC Sports and Yahoo Sports, ends weeks of speculation triggered when Guardiola signed only a two-year extension in 2024 rather than the longer commitments that defined his Etihad tenure.

For Aussie EPL viewers, who have followed Guardiola’s City from the Saturday-night and Sunday-morning AEST windows since 2016, the change marks the most significant managerial transition in the modern Premier League era. The Spaniard’s farewell match kicks off in the early hours of Monday AEST, with City’s place in the European competitions for next season still to be sealed.

A decade, 20 trophies, and a transformed club

Guardiola arrived in 2016 from Bayern Munich and inherited a side that, while wealthy, lacked the institutional habits of the European elite. His ten years have produced six Premier League titles (including the unprecedented 100-point season in 2017-18 and four-in-a-row from 2020-21 to 2023-24), one UEFA Champions League (2022-23 — the centrepiece of City’s first continental treble), four FA Cups and six EFL Cups, plus international honours in the FIFA Club World Cup and UEFA Super Cup. CBS Sports counts the total at twenty trophies; Yahoo and NBC put the same number on the board.

This season, his final on current reporting, has yielded both the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup — a domestic cup double that softens what was otherwise a year in which Arsenal pulled clear in the Premier League title race. Guardiola’s final Premier League points haul will be a five-point deficit on Mikel Arteta’s side, after Arsenal’s narrow Burnley win on Sunday left the title within touching distance for the Gunners.

Enzo Maresca — verbal agreement, no signature yet

The reported successor is Enzo Maresca, the 46-year-old Italian who left Chelsea in January 2026 after winning the UEFA Conference League and FIFA Club World Cup in his first and only season at Stamford Bridge. Football Insider 247 and Yardbarker both report a verbal agreement on a three-year initial contract, though no club statement has confirmed the appointment. CBS Sports describes Maresca as the “expected successor” while flagging that the deal is not yet over the line.

Maresca’s path is unusual: he served as City’s Under-21s coach and then a first-team assistant under Guardiola himself between 2020 and 2023, before head-coach spells at Parma, Leicester (promoted from the Championship in 2024) and Chelsea. His tactical identity is recognisably Guardiola-shaped — possession-led, full-backs inverting into midfield, build-up shaped from the goalkeeper — which has reportedly been a decisive factor for City’s hierarchy.

The other names in the frame

While Maresca is the clear front-runner, Heavy.com and Football Insider 247 list several alternative candidates:

• Luis Enrique (PSG): champion of Europe with PSG in 2024-25 and a long-rumoured Etihad option, though tied to Paris on a contract running through 2026-27.
• Xabi Alonso (recently of Real Madrid): the former Bayer Leverkusen Bundesliga winner who departed Madrid earlier this year. Heavy.com flagged Alonso as the bookmakers’ second favourite earlier in April.
• Vincent Kompany (Bayern Munich): the Manchester City legend whose own Etihad-coaching odds collapsed in early April. Kompany’s emotional weight at City is unmatched but his Bayern contract complicates any move.

None of those alternatives appear to be in active negotiation with City — Yardbarker’s reporting is explicit that “no other names” beyond Maresca are currently under consideration, although the lack of a signed contract leaves room for movement until an official announcement.

What it means for City and for Aussies watching

The transition lands at a pivotal moment for the club. Owners City Football Group have, per multiple reports, prioritised continuity of tactical philosophy over a clean break — which favours Maresca over the more radical Luis Enrique pick. Squad-wise, Erling Haaland’s centre-forward future will be the headline question for the new manager; Kevin De Bruyne’s contract status and Phil Foden’s deeper role round out the immediate selection puzzle.

For the WC 2026 picture, Haaland’s Norway are in Group I alongside France, Senegal and Iraq — kickoffs from 5:00am AEST in mid-June — and Foden anchors England’s midfield H2H storylines opposite Bellingham and Pedri. A managerial change at club level rarely shifts international form materially in a six-week window, but the questions over how Maresca uses both players in 2026-27 will start the moment the appointment is confirmed.

Australian viewers can expect the formal announcement either at full-time on Sunday at the Etihad or, if City want to manage the optics, at a midweek presser to follow. Either way, the post-Guardiola era of the Premier League begins now.

More Reading

• Premier League title race tracker — Arsenal vs City run-in
• WC 2026 odds + outright markets — including Haaland’s Norway and Foden’s England
• Midfield H2H: Bellingham vs Pedri vs Foden — Foden’s WC role
• Group I deep-dive — France’s Path — Haaland’s Norway in the same group