Pep Guardiola Used His Divorce To Explain Manchester City’s Lack Of Passion

Pep Guardiola responded to one of the lowest points of Manchester City’s 2024–25 season by explaining the breakdown of his marriage to his players as part of a team talk about passion.

Previously unseen footage from the new Prime Video documentary A Beautiful Obsession shows Guardiola addressing his squad after City’s 2–0 Champions League defeat by Juventus in December 2024. It was their seventh defeat in ten matches during a run in which the reigning Premier League champions had won only once.

Guardiola began by telling the players about his separation from Cristina Serra, explaining that although there was still love between them, the passion in their relationship had been lost.

This eventually became about Manchester City.

Guardiola asked his players whether they played football simply because they were paid or because something inside them drove them to do it. He told the squad that he did not just want good players, but players with passion.

It was an unusually personal way of addressing an unusually difficult period.

City had dominated English football under Guardiola but were in the middle of the worst run of his tenure, and the manager was searching for a way to explain why a team containing many of the same players suddenly appeared unable to produce the performances that had previously become routine.

The answer, on this occasion, involved his marriage.

The documentary also reveals that Guardiola’s long-time confidant and City’s director of first-team operations, Manuel Estiarte, spoke separately to the players about the manager’s divorce during the same difficult period. Estiarte wanted the squad to understand that behind the intense manager they dealt with every day was somebody also dealing with significant changes in his private life.

Guardiola has spent much of his managerial career explaining football through space, movement, positioning and control.

After losing to Juventus, he decided passion required a more personal example.