Lionel Messi wanted to join Manchester City in August 2020, but that was all the message said. Pep Guardiola knew this. Sergio Aguero had already sent a warning because he was close to the player, but Guardiola was still too down after City’s poor loss to Lyon in the Champions League during the pandemic to listen.

But those five words woke him up. The next day, Guardiola went to Messi’s house in Barcelona to meet him and get to know him. The player was set on leaving after six hours, but his boss was determined to keep him at the Etihad for another year.

The deal did not go through, though, because Messi did not want to fight with his old team. Marti Perarnau’s book The Pep Revolution, on the other hand, shows how well everything was planned.

Once they were done meeting Messi at his house, Guardiola and his assistant coach Juanma Lillo went back to Manchester. While on the plane, they talked about how the famous person could fit in with the City team. When City didn’t have the ball, he would stay in the middle circle and push other teams wide. He would bring everyone up to the box with him when City had the ball.

The Manchester Evening News said at the time that Messi might be going. Someone called Guardiola and asked him if the story was true while he was making plans. When asked how he felt about it, he said, “I’d run twice as far!”

After hearing that Messi was sticking with Barcelona, Perarnau writes that Guardiola was so sad that he couldn’t even train at the City Football Academy. This is part of his in-depth look at all seven seasons in Manchester. But he got it together in the end and found the drive to help City have one of their best seasons ever.