Omar Berrada wage war, Phil Foden doorstepping, birthday champagne: Inside Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City decade | OneFootball

A wide-ranging report has provided a peak through the curtain into Pep Guardiola’s humane moments as Manchester City manager over the course of a decade.

Guardiola was handed a heartwarming farewell across Sunday – when the Catalan lost his final game in charge of Manchester City against Aston Villa at the Etihad Stadium – and Monday’s open bus parade and subsequent Co-op celebrations.

The 55-year-old announced his departure from the Etihad Stadium on Friday last week after deciding against seeing out the final year of his contract, with City understood to have lined up Enzo Maresca as Guardiola’s replacement on an initial three year deal.

Having begun moving out of his Manchester city centre apartment last week, Guardiola has brought the curtain down on an illustrious era in English football as he looks forward to a deserved sabbatical with no plans to return to management anytime soon.

Guardiola’s father-son bond with Phil Foden

Now, according to a wide-ranging insider report from Mail Sport’s Jack Gaughan on Guardiola’s 10-year reign at the Etihad Stadium, a couple of years ago during a ‘lean time on and off the field’, Phil Foden had his manager standing at his front door unannounced, going inside to talk about everything apart from football for an hour.

The insight is a reflection of the 55-year-old’s ‘instinctive but deep emotional intelligence’, with Guardiola known to also send notes of support to club’s women’s team staff, while a list of birthdays of all first-team employees is said to be in his office.

Pep’s insistence on birthday celebrations

A rule stands within the club that a cake is brought for a celebration before a ‘fuss is then made’, birthday wishes beamed on screens around the training ground, and a bottle of champagne sometimes presented.

It is also revealed that at least two wider Manchester City staff members have been given extended compassionate leave for family reasons through Guardiola’s personal request, while he personally persuaded bosses that all staff should be paid in full during the Covid pandemic, while many Premier League rivals used the UK Government’s furlough scheme.

Face-off with Omar Berrada over employee bonuses

Remarkably, Jack Gaughan reveals that on another occasion, Pep Guardiola went to war with Manchester City’s former chief operating officer Omar Berrada, now chief executive at Manchester United, over employee bonuses, telling him that he was paying employees £10,000 each from his own bonus as a Premier League title win pot.

Berrada was said to have been urged by Guardiola to ‘sort out the rest and quickly’. A source is quoted: “The truth is that he will do anything for anybody on the (team) plane. There are those who leave the club and make sure they say they owe him everything.”

You can read Jack Gaughan’s piece for Mail Online in full here!