A new documentary has laid bare the most turbulent period of Pep Guardiola's Manchester City career, capturing the tense moments the Spanish coach lived through with his players. Among them: his dispute with former captain Kyle Walker, and the moment he admitted he came close to walking away from the club.
The Amazon Prime series shows Guardiola addressing his squad before facing Chelsea, just days after Walker joined Milan on loan in January 2025. He voiced his sadness at how the captain's relationship with the club had ended.
"What a sad thing that happened with Kyle," Guardiola told his players, before criticising the defender's conduct. The Englishman, he stressed, could have come to him directly and admitted he felt tired or fancied a new challenge.
"You cannot, as a captain, act the way he did, you cannot, especially in the hardest moments of our lives," the Spanish coach added. Then he turned to the rest of the players and asked: "What did you do, my friends? What did you do to your captain?"
Quite what angered Guardiola and prompted that message, the film never spells out. Other scenes, though, document a heated confrontation between coach and player after City's defeat to Liverpool in December 2024.
Walker had lost the ball to Luis Díaz during that game, an incident that ended with Liverpool winning a penalty. Guardiola rounded on his captain in the dressing room, hammering home how dangerous it was to give the ball away in that area.
Lose the ball, Guardiola told his players, and you concede a goal. That angered Walker, who fired back: "In every meeting, I am the one called out."
"Maybe because you are the captain," Guardiola replied. Walker shot back: "Well, you didn't want me to be your captain."
Walker's team-mates had chosen him as City captain for the 2024-2025 season, with Kevin De Bruyne, Rúben Dias, Rodri and Bernardo Silva taking turns as his deputies.
The series reveals that Walker's crisis landed just as Guardiola himself was going through an extremely difficult spell. City had suffered four straight defeats for the first time in the Spanish coach's career, results were sliding and the pressure was piling up.
In one scene, Guardiola admits he told the club's management, after that run of defeats, that he may have reached the end of his journey with the team. "Maybe it's over," he said.
Guardiola had signed a new contract in November 2024, yet the film lays bare how hard that decision was. Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the chairman of the board, admitted he was far from sure he could persuade Guardiola to stay.
Another scene shows Guardiola close to tears in front of his players, insisting the new deal was not about chasing money or clinging on for the sake of it. He wanted to keep fighting with the team and restore its ability to compete.
"I extended the contract because I want to be here with you, I want to win a battle in this position," the Spanish coach said. "I don't want to feel as if I'm leaving and running away from you."
"If you feel, captains first and then the rest, that there is a problem, tell me," he added. "That will not change my love for you all for a single moment. I want to fight, that's all there is to it."
The crisis bled into Guardiola's personal life. Manel Estiarte, one of his closest backroom staff, spoke of the players noticing a clear change in the coach during that period. He was sad, different from usual.
According to Estiarte, the players were worried about Guardiola. He told them they had to see the man behind the coach, given the difficult personal circumstances he was facing after his divorce.
All of this came in a season that ended with City knocked out of the race for every trophy. It was one of Guardiola's toughest since his arrival in 2016, made worse by Rodri's long injury absence and the pressures tied to the financial cases hanging over the club.
Guardiola chose to stay through it all, turning the crisis that nearly drove him out into a fresh start at Manchester City. The documentary offers a rare glimpse of the Spanish coach away from the spotlight, and of a dressing room that saw disputes, tears and moments of doubt about the future of one of the most successful coaching stories in English football history.