Manchester City begins a football transition with the departure, confirmed by the club this Saturday afternoon, of Txiki Begiristain. The sporting director who arrived at the club in October 2012 after a successful seven-year stay at Barcelona has decided to take a step back and leaves a legacy that seems unrepeatable at the Etihad Stadium: seven Premier League titles, one Champions League , a Club World Cup, a European Super Cup, two Cups, six League Cups and four English Super Cups. His goodbye also points to the future of Pep Guardiola, to whom he is strongly linked not only since they were teammates in the Blaugrana booth or in the technical and sporting direction of the best Barcelona in history, but in recent years as a key duo for City’s strong investment offered sporting returns. In the summer, after the Club World Cup, he will leave Manchester, but not before, according to the club, paving the way for his successor, the Portuguese Hugo Viana.
Viana, a minhoto from Barcelos who played for Valencia and Osasuna, was in charge of sports management at the club of his life, Sporting de Portugal. He will remain there in the remaining months until his landing in England, although City reports that he will collaborate with Begiristain. “To guarantee a smooth transition,” says the current four-time Premier champion.
Club Statement: Director of Football
— Manchester City (@ManCity) October 12, 2024
Begiristain turned 60 last summer and presumably is focusing on a less demanding daily life. His adventure in the Premier will end with a legacy of results, but also an educational one and a disseminator of a football culture that is already present in large European clubs. Mikel Arteta, in charge of Arsenal, Vincent Kompany, coach of Bayern, or Enzo Maresca, coach of Chelsea, passed through the sieve of Begiristain and Guardiola. His goodbye had already been discussed on several occasions, but it comes just now that the club is involved in a trial that will define whether it has breached financial regulations and that could immediately affect the sporting project. Guardiola’s end in Manchester is also suspected: a huge banner written in Catalan hung last weekend at the Etihad asking him to stay. In some way it is understood that his future is linked to that of his sports director, the same one who stood up for him when a year before the sextet there were still doubts at Barça about his ability to coach the first team.
A third leg remains, that of Ferran Soriano, also with a past in Laporta’s first Barça and CEO of the club since September 2012, almost four years after the arrival of the Emirati owners to Manchester. The first thing Soriano requested was the hiring of Begiristain, to whom he gave command of the sports part of the club. Txiki, who at short was a left-footed winger with refined technique, was described by the Welsh coach, John Toshack, as “astute”. He has not lost that quality in the offices, where he has always been ahead of the game to make the best decisions at the right moments. For Johan Cruyff he was the smartest of his players. “He’s the only one who pays attention to me,” the Dutchman said half jokingly, half seriously.
“My job is not just to sign and spend money,” Begiristain said in Barcelona. From 2012 to today, Chelsea and Manchester United, two aimless clubs, have spent more on acquisitions than Manchester City, which invested just over 2,000 million euros and recovered approximately half of that in transfers. But Begiristain was there to help form a winning team, style and idea.
