Guardiola receives offer from Italy and delays decision on his future
Pep Guardiola has not yet closed the door on the dugout. After announcing his departure from Manchester City following ten years and 20 titles, the Catalan coach was caught off guard by a visit he could hardly ignore: Paolo Maldini and Leonardo travelled to Spain last weekend to present him with the proposal of taking over the Italian national team.
A visit that complicates plans to rest
At his farewell City press conference, Guardiola was blunt: he wanted to stop. “I’m not going to coach for a while, otherwise I’d stay here,” he said, admitting that close friends were betting he’d be back within three months. Pep disagreed, but left a small gap open — the possibility of a call too hard to refuse.
That call came. Maldini, to whom Guardiola dedicated the 2009 Champions League won with Barcelona in Rome, and Leonardo showed up in person. The symbolic weight of the meeting is undeniable. For Pep, Italy is not just a professional destination: it is a country with real emotional ties, forged when he played for Roma and Brescia, where he met Carlo Mazzone, a coach he himself calls his “life mentor”.
The project goes beyond salary
The Italian federation, led by Giovanni Malagò, spared no effort to seduce the Catalan. The FIGC president has already publicly admitted that a budget exception is being considered: the offer could reach 5 million euros a year. Far from the more than 20 million he earned at City, but significant by the federation’s current standards.
What makes the offer more attractive, however, is not the number. It is the autonomy. Maldini and Leonardo presented Guardiola with the chance to build his own network of collaborators and scouts, appoint the Under-21 coach — possibly keeping Silvio Baldini — and stamp a single philosophy across all national-team age groups. The central idea is to import Guardiola’s tactical culture into Italian football from top to bottom.
The answer hasn’t come yet, and the deadline stretches
Malagò had set 23 July as the limit to announce the new manager, since he, Maldini and Leonardo were due to attend the Lega Serie A Assembly in Milan. But for a name like Guardiola’s, the date can be made flexible. The federation is willing to wait.
The real problem, according to sources close to the coach, is that Pep knows he cannot do things by halves. Taking on the Azzurri would mean diving head-first into a project demanding total commitment — exactly the opposite of the rest he so craves. The most likely answer is still no. But Maldini is waiting. And few people in football know how to wait with such elegance.
