Pep Guardiola Drops Major Hint Over Manchester City Future Amid Barcelona Links

Guardiola's future is up in the air
Guardiola's future is up in the air / Xavier Laine/Getty Images
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Pep Guardiola has expressed his desire to stay at Manchester City beyond the expiry of his current contract, despite Barcelona presidential candidate Victor Font publicly calling for him to return to Camp Nou in the near future.

Guardiola has won two Premier League titles with Manchester City since joining in 2016, but the club are yet to move to extend his deal, which expires at the end of the season. His future has been further muddied by City's questionable recent form - after yielding their title to Liverpool last season, they have won just two of five matches to start 2020/21.

Speaking ahead of Saturday's clash with Sheffield United, however, the Spaniard made it unequivocally clear he is in no rush to leave.

A comment celebrated by the club's official channels reads: "I am incredibly happy here. I'm delighted to be in Manchester and hopefully I can do a good job this season to stay longer."

Victor Font is one of the frontrunners for the vacant presidential post at Camp Nou, following Josep Baromeu's resignation earlier this month. He will stand for election in March, and recently made a statement of intent which gave birth to reports of a Guardiola return.

"It is our intention to build a very strong and competitive project and we are very lucky at Barca that we inherited a style of play that Johan Cruyff instilled throughout the organisation," he said, per The Guardian.

"And most of the best professionals who know about this style are also fans and love the club - like Pep Guardiola, Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol.

"They are all legends that love Barcelona but do not work for Barca today - we need to bring them back to ensure we will have a very competitive project."

It's likely Font wasn't speaking literally when he said that - but don't let that get in the way of a story!