Who will replace Pep Guardiola as Man City manager?

Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool exit bombshell reminds us that nothing lasts forever. One day Pep Guardiola’s reign at Manchester City will also end once he is tired enough of winning all those trophies all the time.

Who knows, fatigue may take him sooner than expected, now that the prospect of further fights with the man he calls his greatest rival has been robbed.

Guardiola has said he will still be at City next season but is a bit vague beyond that and it is the final year of his current contract.

But whether it’s now, a year from now or beyond, at some point in the future Manchester City will once again find themselves on the hunt for a new manager. Who will it be then? According to the latest odds available, chances are he’s one of those guys.

10) Lionel Scaloni
The former West Ham defender and, perhaps more importantly, the World Cup-winning manager appeared to indicate that he could quit the Argentina job after this summer’s Copa America, which would have put him at the top of many of these lists, but the latest indications are that he is set to see out his contract until the 2026 World Cup, meaning it is becoming a matter of time, with the City job potentially coming up a year earlier. It’s not impossible that he signs an extension and then has a Kloppesque change of heart in 2026, but it remains more likely that the stars don’t quite align for that.

9) Michael
Such is the nature of the modern game that Knows The Football Club can now also be Knows The Football Group. Michel had Girona in one of the most unlikely title bids ever seen in La Liga and “dropping to third place behind Real Madrid and Barcelona” is yet another stunning overachievement. For him to be promoted from within the group rather than the more traditional boot-room promotion from within, so he can’t be ruled out if this season turns out to be more than the flashiest of flashes in the pan.

8) Eddie Howe
It should at least establish Newcastle as a perennial nuisance four to be in with a shout, you’d think. And that still seems a long way off at this point.

7) Ange Postecoglou
Timing is everything here, but this looks absolutely a visitor if Guardiola’s exit from City coincides with Postecoglou getting itchy feet at Spurs, which is traditionally the case at the end of season two, and he’s already reached the ‘hate this’ stage bad club” much faster than anyone could. they anticipated Angeball with unlimited resources could be incredible. As dominant as Guardiola’s City, three times more fun and eight thousand times more use of the word “mate”.

6) Julian Nagelsmann
Getting out of bed when you finally get your chance at a genuine superclub isn’t a great way to get another chance so quickly. He is currently trying to restore and repair his reputation in international football, which is no easy task. There are some promising signs, however. City manager for a day? Yes, I could see that. But Guardiola’s successor? Not so much. He feels he will need some sort of success elsewhere first – would winning the Euros with Germany be enough?

5) Mikel Arteta
Long considered Guardiola’s apprentice, has now become a worthy opponent at Arsenal. He might not tick the Knows The Club box as well as Vincent Kompany, but there’s a bit more going on in the old managerial CV. If City want to try an appointment with some connection to the club and the previous regime, as well as relevant work experience elsewhere, then Arteta is a clear standout candidate. If City were to land him from Arsenal, it would also boil enough p*ss in north London to feed the content factories for months.

4) Zinedine Zidane
It still seems strange, but the idea of ​​Real Madrid specialist Zinedine Zidane rocking up in Manchester City’s Barclays seems vaguely less plausible than appearing anywhere else in England. Certainly less silly than the idea of ​​him going through the Old Trafford juicer.

He would certainly suit City’s idea of ​​themselves, while City now have the status cemented by Guardiola, who could appeal to the big man. And let’s not pretend that the idea of ​​Real Madrid’s most successful player-turned-manager replacing Barcelona’s best at City wouldn’t make for a delicious narrative.

Still, still. It always feels like Zidane’s prominence in all these lists is a product of collective delusion more than anything else.

3) Xabi Alonso
That would be quite something, but here is a manager who will almost certainly end up at one of the giant clubs he represented as a player. The beauty of being a highly rated young manager who has played for Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid is that you will have plenty of options.

He has confirmed he will spend another year at Bayer Leverkusen after this year’s unbeaten run, and that raises the possibility that his timing is better with City than any of the big clubs on his CV. It is also a risk; there must be a very decent chance this summer of marking the pinnacle of his reputation and status, and two of his three ideal jobs were both available.

2) Vincent Kompany
He’s the Knows The Club appointment, the Spoke Well appointment, I Thought, but he’ll have to show a lot more Barclays smarts than we’ve seen so far to confirm there’s more than City DNA to the appointment. But nothing about City’s success in recent years suggests the level of sentimentality such an appointment would require after Kompany so gently took Burnley back to the Championship as part of the worst group of promoted clubs on that I have ever seen.

1) Roberto De Zerbi
It all went a bit wrong at Brighton in the end, didn’t it. She is currently heavily linked with the job currently available at Bayern Munich, which is crazy enough for a manager with no visible experience at a big club on the back of a season that must be a failure, but replacing the best manager in the world at the best team in the world would seem like an even bigger stretch.

It may be brilliant, but it’s a big “Hmm, I’m not sure” from us. A very favorite, to say the least.