Man City boss Guardiola targets switch to international management after Etihad spell

Pep Guardiola points out instructions to his team during a match

Man City boss Pep Guardiola wants to switch to international management once his time in the Premier League comes to an end.

The Spaniard has guided the Citizens to five Premier League titles, two FA Cups, four League Cups, one Champions League, one UEFA Super Cup and one FIFA Club World Cup in his time at the Etihad Stadium.

Guardiola has a contract until the summer of 2025 but recently hinted that he could extend his stay at Man City after admitting he had the “energy” to take it on.

He told reporters in November: “I have energy. I’m not going to answer. One year and a half is a lot of time in football. I arrived here with long hair and look what happened.”

On whether remaining at Man City beyond his current deal was an option, Guardiola added: “Yeah of course – I can leave tomorrow [too]. I would have loved the team that won 100 points [in the 2017-18 season] to stay eternally. At all the clubs this happens.”

And Guardiola has now declared his ambition to manage a national team in the future with the 53-year-old linked to the Spain and England jobs in the past.

The Man City boss told ESPN Brasil: “A national team. I would like to train a national team for a World Cup or a European Championship. I would like that.”

Guardiola continued: “I don’t know who would want me! To work for a national team they have to want you, just like a club.

“When I started in this I never thought about winning a league title or winning the Champions League. No. I thought, I have a job? OK.

“I would like to have the experience of living through a World Cup, or a Euro or a Copa América, or whatever it is. I would like that.

“I don’t know when that would be, if that is five, 10, 15 years from now but I would like to have the experience of being a manager in a World Cup.”

Guardiola will go down as one of the best coaches of all time when he eventually calls it a day and Man Utd legend Wayne Rooney said earlier this week that he would “walk” to Manchester if the Spaniard asked him to be his assistant at Man City.

“It depends (on whether I’d ever be an assistant) – if Pep Guardiola comes in and asks me to be his assistant, you’d walk there,” Rooney told the Stick to Football podcast.

“You see what (Mikel) Arteta is doing now (at Arsenal) and I strongly believe a lot of that is from learning what Guardiola was doing, and so it depends on what the situation is.

“For me, the best manager is Pep and you look at how he adapts – how they (City) are playing now is not the same as how they were playing four years ago.

“He keeps making these subtle changes and then you see everyone else trying to do the same. They also work harder than anyone else.”