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Hello! Pep wants to make it a decade of dominance for City.
On the way:
🔄 Pep stays; Martino leaves Miami
🇨🇦 Canada: Access all areas
😓 Trying to make the 0.01%
🇬🇧 Changing face of EPL ownership
Manager Moves: Guardiola agrees new deal at Man City
Just as the international break was ambling along and everyone was enjoying the relative tranquillity of new social media platform Bluesky, The Athletic’s Sam Lee came bursting in with a big old exclusive: a bolt from the (Sky) Blues of Manchester.
Great news for City, bad news for everyone else: Pep Guardiola is staying. He has agreed a one-year contract extension with the option of an additional year. If the new terms are fulfilled, it would take the Spaniard to over a decade in charge.
But City are in turbulence and Guardiola is suffering the worst run of his managerial career. His team usually have a slow autumn before the juggernaut revs up again in the new year, but it’s never been this bad.
Oh, and there’s the issue of the 115 alleged breaches of financial rules — City have always denied any wrongdoing — that continue to loom over the club.
Change is also afoot. Director of football Txiki Begiristain is leaving in the summer, and while City already have his replacement in the bag — Hugo Viana is coming in from Portugal’s Sporting CP — Guardiola leaving at the same time would have left a huge vacuum at the top; their noisy neighbours in the red half of Manchester can attest to that (see the departures of Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill in 2013 — from which they’ve arguably still not recovered).
The Guardiola deal, which will be announced soon, means a pivot to international football seems unlikely. There were links to England and Brazil, but they now seem dead in the water. Any hopes of seeing the 53-year-old in a dugout during the 2026 World Cup have been banished… for now.
Martino steps aside
While one big-name manager is set to stay, another has decided to quit.
Tata Martino has left Inter Miami, 10 days after their shock MLS Cup exit to Atlanta United. After a record-breaking regular season, a Supporters’ Shield title and securing a place at the Club World Cup, they fell at the first hurdle of the play-offs and now the 62-year-old Argentinian is gone.
Martino cited personal reasons, but the team’s lofty ambitions will not have helped; Miami would have expected to go deep in the MLS Cup with Lionel Messi and Co.
Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images
Who next?
The full reasons behind the resignation will surely come to light when Miami’s top brass address the media on Friday. But now it’s a question of who is next — and how will this affect Messi?
Co-owners David Beckham and Jorge Mas, and president of football operations Raul Sanllehi, once of Arsenal and Barcelona fame, will be leading the hunt for a new person to lead the team, and maybe Messi will have an influence here, too.
Two names which keep popping up are his former Barca team-mates, Xavi Hernandez and Javier Mascherano. If either get the role, they will likely have Messi, 37, for just a single season so must get a tune out of him from the technical area, just as they did alongside him on the pitch in their playing days.
News Round-Up
Canada Climbing: How Marsch has sparked surge to Nations League finals
Jesse Marsch has a style and he sticks to it. While it hasn’t worked everywhere, Canada are going from strength to strength under his guidance.
A 3-0 win (4-0 on aggregate) over Suriname sees them into the CONCACAF Nations League semi-finals to face Mexico in March 2025. Jacob Shaffelburg scored twice, aided by a less-than-robust challenge from Suriname goalkeeper Etienne Vaessen (above).
But what’s the camp like off the pitch? The Athletic’s Joshua Kloke was granted access all areas for their trip to Suriname in the first leg.
He saw their plane thrown off course by a drone, after-dinner initiations and Marsch’s Top Gun quotes (the original, obviously). It’s all underpinned by positivity, attention to detail and a strong work ethic.
Who knows what they can do with a World Cup on home soil in 18 months?
International ICYMI: Bane of defenders’ lives
Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images
- Viktor Gyokeres hit four for Sweden as they thrashed Azerbaijan 6-0. That’s 58 goals in 2024 for him. Ridiculous, frankly. His celebration is inspired by Bane’s mask in Batman. Defenders are rightly running scared — and our TAFC podcast has asked if he is ready for the Premier League.
- Another day, another Messi record. His assist for Lautaro Martinez during Argentina’s 1-0 win against Peru was his 58th in international football, tying him at the top of the all-time rankings with ex-USMNT forward Landon Donovan. It’s only a matter of time before this is broken.
- I was curious to see how Craig Bellamy would be as a head coach. He’s surpassing all expectations with Wales, and their 4-1 win over Iceland has seen them promoted to the top table of Nations League football. Da iawn.
🤔 Confused by what all these UEFA Nations League results mean? We’ve explained it all here.
Pros And Cons: What happens if you don’t make it as a player?
(Jacob Tanswell/The Athletic)
My colleague Jacob Tanswell has documented his journey and that of his ex-team-mates after they navigated the youth system at Bournemouth. Jacob was released at 16 and it’s a powerful piece on the difficulties players face when they don’t make the grade — and answers a lot of questions…
How hard is it to go pro in the UK? Data suggests that, of the 1.5million boys who play organised youth football in England, only 0.01 per cent will make a single appearance in the Premier League. The odds are not in your favour.
What happens to those released? Football can spit you out as quickly as it swallows you, and there are big question marks over the aftercare that clubs provide for released players — and if it is good enough. Some players dust themselves off and go again. Many drop out of the game entirely and look for jobs elsewhere.
There is a plumber, a Royal Marine and, of course, a journalist among the former Bournemouth youth players shown above (Jacob is fourth from the left in the back row).
What effect does it have on youngsters? I was interested to read from Jacob’s ex-team-mates that for some there was an overriding sense of relief when not offered professional deals — they were freed from the pressures put on their shoulders, even as kids. The psychological effects are huge. The loss of identity; the feeling that they have let people down.
The death of former Manchester City youngster Jeremy Wisten, who took his own life shortly after his release, made football stand up and take notice. It needs to do more to support children — because that’s what they are — when their dreams are shattered.
Show Viz
It’s startling, when you take a step back, to see the changing face of Premier League owners over the last three decades.
In 1992, boardrooms were mainly British, with clubs run by ‘local men done good’. But meat magnates and haulage heroes have been replaced by oligarchs, hedge funds and oil money.
Here’s a fact: “From 1993 to 2018, when the UK economy more than doubled, the total value of Premier League clubs grew 30 times larger.”
And business people overseas have been able to keep pace with what Matt Slater calls ‘football’s voodoo economics’.
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(Top photo: Getty Images)
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