Josko Gvardiol interview: His new Man City deal, Pep Guardiola’s exit and Enzo Maresca hopes

“In that moment it was a chaos of emotions,” Josko Gvardiol says, reflecting on his last-minute goal for Croatia against Portugal at the World Cup. “At the beginning I was probably the happiest person in the world, then we all realised that it was offside because of the hair and everything…”

Gvardiol had hoped to arrive at the World Cup fully fit, having missed the second half of Manchester City’s 2025-26 season with a broken leg, but the pain from that injury will take a year to fully heal.

He did not get onto the pitch in that last-16 clash with Portugal until the 92nd minute, and he saw Goncalo Ramos put Portugal 2-1 up two minutes later. Then, in the 103rd minute, he pounced on a loose ball to seemingly force extra time, only for the officials to determine, after a lengthy VAR delay, that the ball had flicked Igor Matanovic’s hair, meaning the City man was offside. It was one of the most dramatic, controversial moments of the summer.

“It’s a silly situation, just because of the hair, and also when you see on TV, they showed there is only one (touch) but during the whole action, if you start from the cross, there is one contact and before Matanovic touches it with the hair, I think there was like two (touches) and we couldn’t see it on the TV.

“It wasn’t easy — because of this thing, you are out of the World Cup.

“After winning the bronze medal and silver medal (at the last two World Cups), I thought it was going to be a good one, but that’s football. You need to accept it, and yeah, it was time to go home. Back to Croatia.”

Gvardiol prepared for the World Cup by doing barrel rolls in a Red Bull plane and last year spent a week of his summer doing commando training with Croatian green berets on the Velebit mountain range, but things have been more sedate this time around.

He agreed just before the World Cup to sign a new five-year contract at City, despite interest from Europe’s biggest clubs. His career has been carefully mapped out to this point. He rejected a move to Leeds United at 18, after just a season at Dinamo Zagreb, and could have moved to Chelsea in 2022, but felt that joining a new team would not be easy with the Qatar World Cup crammed into the middle of the season.

Then he moved to City in 2023, after months of negotiations between Txiki Begiristain and RB Leipzig’s Max Eberl, the sporting directors at the time. Begiristain did not take no for an answer, and having started the bidding at around £52million ($70m), he agreed to pay £77m.

With two years left on his contract, at a time when Pep Guardiola had left the club, other players may have felt it was time for another challenge.

“No, I don’t think that way,” Gvardiol says. “As a player, I need to see, ‘Do they need me? Am I going to be here just to try and have fun or am I going to perform and to compete?’. I am happy to sign a new deal for five years. I am still 24 and with a new manager, everyone has to fight for their position. No one is secure. There are going to be a lot of changes and I am looking forward to seeing what will happen at the beginning of the season, how we are going to play, who is going to play. Every day is a new challenge and new opportunity.”

The final week of City’s season was taken over by news of Guardiola’s departure. The news broke 24 hours before a vital game at Bournemouth, but the Catalan refused to confirm his intentions after that. Official confirmation did not come for several more days, after he had told his players and staff.

“Some would say he could have told us earlier, some would say not,” Gvardiol says. “It was perfect timing because it can affect you mentally if he would have said it earlier. It was perfect timing, we knew at some point he had to tell us. He has been here for 10 years, and it is time to rest a little bit, retire.”

He says, though, that something was in the air long before that.

“We could feel it. The season before he was in between, about to leave, then he stayed — which was great because it was another season to try to win something. Two seasons ago we struggled, 13 games without winning. Unfortunately it was time to go but who knows with him, maybe after six months he’ll get the energy back.”

City ended the season with a bus parade and, most notably, a star-studded sold-out event at the Co-Op Live arena that pulled the curtain down on the Guardiola era with special appearances from Jack Grealish, Vincent Kompany and, via video, Michael Jordan.

City won the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup last season, but Gvardiol’s standards had led him to wonder whether, in normal circumstances, those celebrations would have been merited without a Premier League or Champions League.

“Did we deserve it? Yes? No? We don’t know,” he says. “But Pep and the guys who left us at the end of the season, they deserve it more than anyone.”

John Stones and Bernardo Silva also departed, both of them crying uncontrollably at different points of their final game for City, against Aston Villa. Gvardiol says they will be missed.

“When I was younger, I wouldn’t say John was my idol because I was already a defender, but he was one of the best defenders. It’s a secret, but every season I asked him to sign a shirt for me.

“(We were) very close. We discussed football, but not every time because it’s impossible to talk about football every day — sometimes we need to switch off. Every time we would have some team dinners, parties, whatever, he was one of the funniest guys, him and Matheus Nunes. He’s funny. Now we need to see, because John is gone, so he’s going to miss his soulmate.

“Also, Bernardo, both are great people and characters. How much have we lost? We will find out when we regroup at the start of the season, but we’re going to miss both of them.”

Stones sealed a move to Inter last week, and Bernardo joined Real Madrid in June.

“It’s a perfect club for John,” Gvardiol says. “He’s going to love it being in Italy and also Bernardo being back where he belongs — he talked about Spain for a long, long time!”

During contract talks with City director of football Hugo Viana, Gvardiol was assured that he is considered one of the pillars of the team as they head into the Enzo Maresca era, with Phil Foden and Erling Haaland also in that bracket.

After a major squad overhaul during the past two years, Gvardiol is suddenly one of City’s longest-serving players. Only Foden, Haaland, Nico O’Reilly and Ruben Dias have been at the club for longer and, at 24, he could be in line to join the club’s captaincy group.

During pre-season, Gvardiol has played a leading role in training, used in drills to get the ball rolling, hinting that he could be central to Maresca’s build-up play. City changed their style fairly dramatically last season, with a more direct style thanks to a combination of new players unsuited to possession football and opponents deploying man-to-man marking.

That should suit Gvardiol, as he has always been confident on the ball and was already trying that type of long pass as soon as he arrived — only to be told to cut them out.

“The main thing is long balls and diagonal balls,” he says of the changes during last season. “In my first season at Leipzig, we were giving it to the full-back and then the full-back switches it to the other side. I tried that a couple of times when I joined City and Pep said, ‘No, no, no’. When I saw someone attacking in behind, I would just try. It was kind of forbidden in my first year, and in the last one he tried something.”

When it comes to Maresca, Gvardiol is confident that he is the right man to take the club forward.

“The level is that high, and he has been chosen for that reason as the manager. He has the quality, he has some new ideas and also we need to see what we’re going to do with the style of play, the football we are going to play and the tactics and everything. He is a perfect one, but it takes time.

“It’s something totally new. It’s not easy to change the manager, so we will take time. It’s our job to help him as much as possible and also to listen and try to adapt as quickly as possible.”

Off the pitch, Gvardiol is always looking for the next thrill. He became a Red Bull athlete for the World Cup and was supposed to drive a Formula 1 car around Silverstone with Max Verstappen to mark the occasion.

“But I couldn’t make it,” he explains. “We had a pre-season before the World Cup, and there is there is like a small airport nearby. They said, ‘OK, we’re going to do something for you’. It was a surprise. I didn’t know what was going on. So I went there, I thought we are having a photoshoot and then I realised there is a plane. I’m not afraid of doing this — I love that stuff — but it was a bit too much spinning. I was glad that I hadn’t had breakfast that morning!

“So now the problem is what’s next? Because this is like the best thing you could ever do. Maybe jump out, without a parachute! I’m joking. I would like to try Formula 1, to drive the car. Maybe skiing, but it’s too dangerous now, especially because of our knees. So maybe once I retire, I’ll try the jumps and everything.”

He will be hoping that the next few years are not quite so heart-racing, on the pitch at least.