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Pep Guardiola was announced as Manchester City manager on February 1, 2016, in unusual circumstances.
06:00, 01 Feb 2026
On the day Manchester City announced Pep Guardiola as their next manager, a look at their social media would not have given the game away. The club's official Twitter account posted 39 times on February 1, 2016 but there was not one mention of the generational coach typed out.
Where any signings today are not complete without an enormous package of photos, videos, graphics and AI-generated content, the closest City came to announcing a coup that would change world football was a link to a club statement that was accompanied by a corner flag picture that usually points to a sacking - and the statement in full later that day on a blue background with the club crest.
If that points to the leap in social media and club content over the last decade, it also reflected the fact that City hadn't in fact sacked a manager - he had just been told his time was up. As part of his arranged farewell, he got to decide how it was announced.
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Manuel Pellegrini obviously knew that he was never first choice with City bosses when he took the job in 2013. It wasn't that he didn't know he was a worthy hire, it's just that he could never be the former Barcelona manager that the former Barcelona CEO and former Barcelona sporting director that were now in place at the Etihad wanted.
Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain arrived in east Manchester shortly after City had won their first Premier League title, and pretty much immediately set about convincing their former colleague Pep Guardiola to join them. He was on sabbatical in New York after being ground down by the pressure of life at the Camp Nou and Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid but open to a new challenge in 2013.
Bayern won the race for Guardiola at that time, so City turned to their No.2 on the list in Pellegrini. And while he knew he could never be Guardiola, he also knew that the reality of bringing the Catalan to Manchester may never occur and even if it did, nobody knew when.
His first season went beyond anybody's expectations, with a City side usually featuring two strikers smashing their way to 100 goals in record time, winning both the Premier League and league cup, and getting past the Champions League group stage for the first time. Given the way Roberto Mancini's tenure had fallen apart after winning the league in 2012, this was a welcome response as the Blues looked to prove that they could compete consistently as one of the best teams in Europe.
The next year was not as successful, but the club showed faith in Pellegrini and - despite suggestion they could replace him - handed him a new deal in August 2015 that would extend his stay until 2017. "I am not talking about Pep Guardiola, he is a manager that every team will want to manage because he is a great manager," said Pellegrini.
"I have no problem with my relations inside the club. I know exactly how the owners think. I was used last season to the speculation. Carlo Ancelotti had a contract signed and Jurgen Klopp had also a contract. For me, the owners are happy with the way I am working. Me, I am also happy at this club. It is impossible to know about the future."
The reference to Guardiola reflected that Pellegrini had been constantly asked about the Bayern boss, given how close he was to two of the most important men in the City hierarchy. That would continue over the next months as it became clearer that Guardiola would be ready to say Auf Wiedersehen to the Bundesliga in 2016.
It was never clear cut in public that he would join City though. United and Chelsea had both won more titles than the Blues over the last decade and each had their own pulling power, while Arsenal saw it as the perfect opportunity for Arsene Wenger to be succeeded without feeling like he had been pushed out.
Away from the media though, Begiristain and Soriano were confident they would get their man this time and were not wrong. It was why the statement announcing Guardiola referred back to the original talks before Pellegrini got the job.
Before that though, Pellegrini had to be told - and almost nobody else. City knew that they had to control such sensational news, but had to consider that there was still half a season where four trophies were on offer to the Blues that they didn't want to throw away on top of a manager in position that they could not be seen to be doing the same to.
The plan, kept to a vanishingly small number, was for Pellegrini to announce his own departure. It was expected that another question about his future would come up at a press conference given the ongoing noise around Guardiola, and there the Chilean could announce that he would be leaving at the end of the season.
Except Pellegrini had done too good a job of shutting down all speculation or interesting lines of enquiry during his two-and-a-half years at the club. If City communications staff spent the years that Roberto Mancini was in charge wondering what on earth would be in newspapers the next day, Pellegrini was at the other end of the spectrum where the answer was probably not very much.
Those journalists in attendance for the press conference ahead of the Premier League game at Sunderland had spent weeks and months asking Pellegrini about his future and getting no usable words back in return, and a day before transfer deadline day there were plenty of other topics to explore. To the dismay of the two senior communications staff in the room, the press conference finished without a single question about Pellegrini's contract.
As silence filled the room, the manager muttered the words he knew he had to - albeit not in the clearest way in the extraordinary circumstances.
"Before we finish I will tell you that I talked with the club and I will finish my contract on the original date in June," he said.
"We extended the contract one year more but with the clause that one of the club or me may not use that extended contract. So, I will finish here on the original date, June 30. There has been a lot of speculation about things, but they [the club] are not doing anything behind me. I knew this one month ago.
"I don't think it is good to have speculation about different things. I prefer to finish [by announcing] today - that is why I have told the press and told the players. I told the club two weeks ago that I would do it."
As the dozen or so reporters made their way down the stairs from City's press conference room trying to take in the news, waiting for them at desks was a club statement printed on A4 paper with news embargoed for a few minutes later confirming that Guardiola would take over; the club website crashed shortly after the statement went online. Pellegrini's news would fill TV channels for the day but the headline news would be his replacement.
There was a knock-on effect for Sunderland, who were hosting City the next day. They had to close their accreditation process early because of the sudden clamour from across the globe to unearth more about what had been one of the best-kept secrets in the game.
Pellegrini would later say that he regretted making the announcement in the way he did, saying that 'something was broken' in the squad at that moment and lamenting the way the season fell away. City did win the league cup and reach the Champions League semis for the first time, but their performance in the latter was criticised by bosses and their Premier League challenge fell away with the conversation with players always turning towards the next season.
And if there was incredibly little fanfare from City to trumpet Guardiola's arrival, they made up for it when he joined with an enormous welcome event for the manager at the training ground that supporters were invited to. Any disappointment from the second half of the 2015/16 season has more than been made up for in the decade since too, with Guardiola bringing unprecedented success to the club with the greatest era in their history.
When he does finally leave, whether it is this summer, 2027 or beyond, City can only hope that the secret has been kept as well as the arrival was.
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