Manchester City spent two years filming the end of the Pep Guardiola era with their own cameras, and the four-part series that begins on Prime today contains the captain accusing the manager of singling him out, the chairman saying he was too angry to speak to him, and Guardiola in tears in front of his players. A Beautiful Obsession was shot by City Studios, the club's in-house agency, under an arrangement understood to be worth several million pounds.
The scene that anchors part one, titled The Desert, comes in the away dressing room at Anfield on 1 December 2024, after a 2-0 defeat in which Kyle Walker lost the ball to Luis Diaz for the penalty Mohamed Salah converted. "Kyle has to know that if you lose the ball it's a goal," Guardiola tells the room. Walker fires back: "Every meeting, it's my name". Guardiola replies: "Maybe because you're a captain." Walker: "OK. You didn't want me to be your captain".
Guardiola had signed a new contract 11 days earlier, in the middle of the worst run of his time at the club, and the film cuts to him in tears. "If I'm a problem, then you have to tell me," he says. "I won't stay here just for the money, or just for the fact to stay. I extended the contract because I want to be here with you, I want to win a fight in that position. I don't want to feel that I'm leaving and running away from you."
The run itself is not softened. City played 13 matches in all competitions between 30 October and 26 December 2024, won one and lost nine, a sequence that took in a 3-3 draw with Feyenoord after leading by three goals and a 2-0 loss at Juventus. Guardiola told the series director, Kevin Macdonald, that after four straight defeats he had gone to the club and said: "Maybe it's over." The chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, describes the same moment differently: "You know the boy that cried wolf? He is the boy that cried wolf. I always convince him, but last year, I knew, this time he actually saw the wolf."