Man City handed Pep Guardiola boost despite Txiki Begiristain decision
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola will be losing a key ally when sporting director Txiki Begiristain leaves
One of the best signings of the Manchester City era is leaving.
Txiki Begiristain arrived at the Etihad back in 2012 and has overseen more than a decade of recruitment that can rival any club in world football to engineer quality football backed up by multiple trophies. The man who put Pep Guardiola into the Barcelona hotseat also had enough sway to convince his friend to join him in 2016, wasting no opportunity to talk up City while the coach was at Bayern.
It is going to leave a huge hole to be filled, although part of Begiristain's job has been to help land Hugo Viana as his replacement. His reputation and legacy will be greater if City maintain their position with Viana than it would if it all falls apart.
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City will find it even harder to keep up their levels if Guardiola chooses to leave as well. Widely recognised as the best manager in the world, he has formed a formidable team with Begiristain with the sporting director a close confidante for his coach on a regular basis.
They are so close that Guardiola has known for a long time that Begiristain would be leaving at the end of this season, having already stayed longer than he was expecting to. Because of that, it can only be good news for the Blues that the manager hasn't already decided to follow him out of the door.
He may yet, with a contract up and an expectation that this will be his last season in charge, but fans have still been left with hope by the absence of a decision. Guardiola is still weighing up what to do, and in the meantime has been spending his press conferences talking about the transition from the Club World Cup to the beginning of next season.
That could all just be the manager making sure that plans are in place for a seamless change in the dugout, but nothing is official yet. Even with the knowledge that Begiristain is leaving, Guardiola still hasn't convinced himself that the job isn't worth keeping.
As far as Guardiola's future is concerned, no news is good news.