It was the summer that brought a break with the past. Pep Guardiola parted company with an ally for decades and much of a great side. Txiki Begiristain, his Barcelona teammate, his director of football at the Nou Camp and then Manchester City, headed off into retirement. One way or another, whether loaned out, sold or their contracts simply not renewed, six of City’s Champions League winners headed off. It was farewell to Ederson, Kyle Walker, Manuel Akanji, Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne and Jack Grealish, a six-man group who included three City captains.
City got three goals and three points against Liverpool on Sunday. Guardiola’s team included only three who had started the 2023 Champions League final: Ruben Dias, Bernardo Silva and Erling Haaland. The shift from one generation to another was first delayed; then it came at double-quick time. Of the other eight, Phil Foden came off the bench against Inter Milan in Istanbul. Nico O’Reilly was at City then, but had never made a senior appearance. Three more were signed in the summer of 2023, in Josko Gvardiol, Matheus Nunes and Jeremy Doku. Nico Gonzalez arrived in the winter window of 2025, Rayan Cherki and Gianluigi Donnarumma at either ends of the summer. This is City 3.0, where the only starter in his thirties is the new captain Silva.
“We are the youngest squad right now, that I had in my period here,” said Guardiola. “We need all this energy to try to emulate what the predecessors have done.” And if the manager himself, who cut a drained figure during his awful autumn of 2024, his face scratched by himself in impotent frustration, can cut a reenergised figure, perhaps he is inspired by the running power of his side.
City have an average age of 24.9 in the Premier League this season, down from 26.6 last year. But then the six departed Champions League winners are all in their thirties. As Guardiola reflected on Sunday, the game is hard enough without nine players needing to run more because a couple of others do not, or cannot.
As he looked back to last year, when City were riven by injuries, struggling with too small a squad, paying a price for delaying their rebuild, he recalled a player whose heart was willing, even when the legs were not.
“Bernardo was struggling last season, but he was there,” he said. “Every single game, exhausted. After 50, 60 minutes, he could not run one minute. In certain moments, he said, ‘Pep, I’m drained’.” That willingness to play meant Silva dragged his way through 52 games in Guardiola’s toughest season. “And that’s why he’s my captain,” said a manager who abandoned his policy of letting the players vote to bestow the armband on the Portuguese. Bad as it was, he knew last year could have been worse but for his attitude.
“Normally in that situation, in the Premier League, you finish 10th,” Guardiola added. “So in the end, we never give up. I said many times to my chairman and CEO, if we survive last season and qualify for the Champions League, that is a big, big prize. One of the seasons I will remember the most, one of the more proud I am, last season, for sure. It was a good lesson. Sometimes you have to live that as a club.”
Guardiola has taken his lessons, some pertaining to Silva. Go back to January 2019, to another win over Liverpool, and Silva ran 13.7km. On Sunday, with younger legs around him, he completed 94 per cent of his passes, the most of any player to attempt at least 15. He is benefiting from having younger legs around him. So, in another respect, is Guardiola. “Last season we didn’t bring the energy,” he said. “Last season many times, I tried desperately to do anything, but I was not able to click.” His powers suddenly deserted him as his team looked underpowered.
There is Premier League physicality now: in the pace of Doku and Omar Marmoush, the ability to cover large distances of Nunes and Tijjani Reijnders, the height of O’Reilly at left-back and Gonzalez in midfield. None, arguably, is a technician of the calibre of Gundogan or a creator of the genius of De Bruyne, though Doku has his own super-strength in his ability to slalom past defenders.
It is a sign of the tactical shift. The new-look City have had 56.8 per cent possession; like the average age, it is actually a dramatic drop, from 61.6 percent last year and 65.2 per cent in the Treble-winning campaign of 2022-23. Last season, though, City needed the ball because of their vulnerability without it. Now there is more forcefulness in Guardiola’s group.
There is an enduring question if they can, as Guardiola said, emulate their predecessors. Which, given the heights Gundogan, De Bruyne and co scaled in winning six Premier Leagues in seven years and a Champions League, is a tough ask.
But for now Guardiola is enjoying the new toys at his disposal. Given the new dynamic, it presents problems to opponents trying to second-guess him: will it be Cherki or Reijnders? Will City play with a narrow midfield or genuine wingers? Will Silva be stationed on the right or infield? “We can play in different ways now,” said Guardiola. “I think we are more unpredictable.”
And if City had, for them, the wrong kind of unpredictability in their sudden slide last autumn, now the great unknown is what this younger, faster team can accomplish.
