SOMETHING JUMPS OUT at the recent reporting of Manchester City’s four-part sort-of-fly-on-the-wall documentary over their last two seasons.
Launching on Prime Video on Wednesday and detailing the last two seasons of City’s fluctuating powers, for many, the key narrative driver is manager Pep Guardiola’s descent into a personal abyss.
By the start of 2025, Guardiola’s marriage to Cristina Serra had unravelled. He had first met her when he was 18, but it wasn’t until 2014 that they wed, when he was managing Bayern Munich. The couple have three children.
After defeat to Juventus in the 2024-25 season, their seventh defeat in 10 days, he stood in the away dressing room and addressed his players.
“Guys, I want to confess something,” he said.
“I am fucking divorced from the most beautiful woman in your planet, my wife, my ex-wife. I love her unbelievably but we lost the passion. I love her? Yeah, absolutely. She loves me? Yeah, but we lost the passion.
“How do you play football? Because you play, or for something inside?
“In your lives, whatever you are going to do, do it with passion. I don’t want good players, I want players with passion.”
Pep Guardiola gets emotional after 2-0 defeat against Juventus and tells the team about his divorce with his wife.
Other storylines compete for attention. The deterioration of his relationship with club captain Kyle Walker is one. In another scene, he gives Erling Haaland the kind of dressing down you thought couldn’t possibly exist in a dressing room full of millionaires.
But the admission about his divorce is startling, disturbing and hugely sad.
‘A Beautiful Obsession’ is about the worst title you can give this work. How beautiful was this obsession for a man who wakes up in a house without his wife and children, all sacrificed to a maniacal work ethic to keep Manchester City among the trophies?
The sentiments merely echoed something said by José Mourinho in his own recent docuseries.
Mourinho has spent a great deal of time away from his own family. During his time in charge of Manchester United, he lived alone in The Lowry Hotel, with his family elsewhere.
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José Mourinho. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Almost 10 years ago, he spoke of his unusual domestic situation. His son was 17 and signed to Fulham on a scholarship, while his daughter was 20 and in university in London.
“So, they are at an age where they can’t chase me like they did before,” he said.
“So, for the first time, the family lives in a different way. We try to feel it, we try to see the evolution of our feelings and see how we cope with the situation.”
His updated thoughts and reflections for the documentary painted the picture of a man at a remove from the rest of his family.
“Sometimes you have a feeling of, ‘I should be there, I’m not there’, but I don’t want you to think that family means something less important to me. They are in a place that they cannot even be compared with football.
“But to tell the truth, I know that they enjoy life much more without me. That’s real. It’s true. If they go to a restaurant with me, it’s different than going without me.”
Agreeing to documentaries of this kind has a tendency to throw up a truism that, for the most part, the ultra-successful tend to be a bit odd. You don’t have to watch David Beckham wiping down his outside kitchen for half an hour to confirm this.
The first point many would make about the familial situations of Mourinho and Guardiola is that both men have been made fabulously wealthy by their work, and that’s the trade-off.
Long before club owners submitted to the commercial revenue streams of this kind of programming, the Galway sub-goalkeeper, Pat Comer, indulged his film-making ambitions by filming elements of Galway’s preparations for the 1998 All-Ireland football championship campaign.
Galway subsequently won Sam Maguire. A documentary was cut with the available footage and some supplementary material. The great pity was that this was the one element of an All-Ireland winning team that wasn’t copied around the country.
This documentary featured exceptionally grounded individuals such as the late John O’Mahony as manager and team captain Ray Silke.
Since O’Mahony’s time, the job of an intercounty manager has become an infinitely more pressured environment.
Management teams in Gaelic games have devoured every habit, trend and pattern of professional sports, pushing boundaries in analysis, strategy and physical preparation.
As a result, the pressure placed on managers, be it self-inflicted or a consequence of expectations, has gone to a level that is clearly unsustainable.
The new reality has given rise to the introduction of a ‘full-time’ manager. A small band of managers who don’t have traditional jobs, yet their upkeep is provided by various means, mostly a host of benefactors.
Their numbers are small yet, and while the rumoured figures are generous, they don’t comprise the sort of money to set someone up for life.
Others just manage to make it all work. Somehow.
Sabbaticals are popular, such as the one undertaken by Limerick hurling manager John Kiely who was principal, then stepped down to be vice-principal, of Abbey CBS in Tipperary town.
Being a teacher is still the most likely pathway to becoming a county manager, the sympathetic hours being a temptation for prospective county players also.
In recent years, a number of GAA managers have experienced health difficulties while in a county role.
Liam Kearns was in charge of Offaly when he passed away at the age of 61 after a short illness in March 2023.
In February 2024, the then-Tyrone manager Feargal Logan had a stroke on the day he was preparing to face Derry in the National League.
Back in July 2022, Cork manager Keith Ricken stepped down from his role due to health reasons, and Kevin McStay took unwell at a Mayo training session last year and had to be kept in a hospital for observation.
And while correlation shouldn’t be assumed as causation, the trend is a worrying one nonetheless.
Former Cork senior manager, Keith Ricken. Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
Only a few short months ago, the Derry manager Ciaran Meenagh told an alarming story at the Ulster championship launch about falling asleep at the wheel of his car while returning from Down training late at night.
As he acknowledged, he got lucky when his car drifted into a wide verge and the only damage was superficial to his car.
Many managers have admitted to an unhealthy obsession with the games, which come at a detriment to personal and family life.
Former Monaghan manager Séamus McEnaney has described it as “like a disease, an addiction”.
It’s an obsession. But there’s nothing beautiful about it.
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Guardiola's 'beautiful obsession' a cautionary tale for modern GAA's pressure cooker
SOMETHING JUMPS OUT at the recent reporting of Manchester City’s four-part sort-of-fly-on-the-wall documentary over their last two seasons.
Launching on Prime Video on Wednesday and detailing the last two seasons of City’s fluctuating powers, for many, the key narrative driver is manager Pep Guardiola’s descent into a personal abyss.
By the start of 2025, Guardiola’s marriage to Cristina Serra had unravelled. He had first met her when he was 18, but it wasn’t until 2014 that they wed, when he was managing Bayern Munich. The couple have three children.
After defeat to Juventus in the 2024-25 season, their seventh defeat in 10 days, he stood in the away dressing room and addressed his players.
“Guys, I want to confess something,” he said.
“I am fucking divorced from the most beautiful woman in your planet, my wife, my ex-wife. I love her unbelievably but we lost the passion. I love her? Yeah, absolutely. She loves me? Yeah, but we lost the passion.
“How do you play football? Because you play, or for something inside?
“In your lives, whatever you are going to do, do it with passion. I don’t want good players, I want players with passion.”
Other storylines compete for attention. The deterioration of his relationship with club captain Kyle Walker is one. In another scene, he gives Erling Haaland the kind of dressing down you thought couldn’t possibly exist in a dressing room full of millionaires.
But the admission about his divorce is startling, disturbing and hugely sad.
‘A Beautiful Obsession’ is about the worst title you can give this work. How beautiful was this obsession for a man who wakes up in a house without his wife and children, all sacrificed to a maniacal work ethic to keep Manchester City among the trophies?
The sentiments merely echoed something said by José Mourinho in his own recent docuseries.
Mourinho has spent a great deal of time away from his own family. During his time in charge of Manchester United, he lived alone in The Lowry Hotel, with his family elsewhere.
Almost 10 years ago, he spoke of his unusual domestic situation. His son was 17 and signed to Fulham on a scholarship, while his daughter was 20 and in university in London.
“So, they are at an age where they can’t chase me like they did before,” he said.
“So, for the first time, the family lives in a different way. We try to feel it, we try to see the evolution of our feelings and see how we cope with the situation.”
His updated thoughts and reflections for the documentary painted the picture of a man at a remove from the rest of his family.
“Sometimes you have a feeling of, ‘I should be there, I’m not there’, but I don’t want you to think that family means something less important to me. They are in a place that they cannot even be compared with football.
“But to tell the truth, I know that they enjoy life much more without me. That’s real. It’s true. If they go to a restaurant with me, it’s different than going without me.”
Agreeing to documentaries of this kind has a tendency to throw up a truism that, for the most part, the ultra-successful tend to be a bit odd. You don’t have to watch David Beckham wiping down his outside kitchen for half an hour to confirm this.
The first point many would make about the familial situations of Mourinho and Guardiola is that both men have been made fabulously wealthy by their work, and that’s the trade-off.
Long before club owners submitted to the commercial revenue streams of this kind of programming, the Galway sub-goalkeeper, Pat Comer, indulged his film-making ambitions by filming elements of Galway’s preparations for the 1998 All-Ireland football championship campaign.
Galway subsequently won Sam Maguire. A documentary was cut with the available footage and some supplementary material. The great pity was that this was the one element of an All-Ireland winning team that wasn’t copied around the country.
This documentary featured exceptionally grounded individuals such as the late John O’Mahony as manager and team captain Ray Silke.
Since O’Mahony’s time, the job of an intercounty manager has become an infinitely more pressured environment.
Management teams in Gaelic games have devoured every habit, trend and pattern of professional sports, pushing boundaries in analysis, strategy and physical preparation.
As a result, the pressure placed on managers, be it self-inflicted or a consequence of expectations, has gone to a level that is clearly unsustainable.
The new reality has given rise to the introduction of a ‘full-time’ manager. A small band of managers who don’t have traditional jobs, yet their upkeep is provided by various means, mostly a host of benefactors.
Their numbers are small yet, and while the rumoured figures are generous, they don’t comprise the sort of money to set someone up for life.
Others just manage to make it all work. Somehow.
Sabbaticals are popular, such as the one undertaken by Limerick hurling manager John Kiely who was principal, then stepped down to be vice-principal, of Abbey CBS in Tipperary town.
Being a teacher is still the most likely pathway to becoming a county manager, the sympathetic hours being a temptation for prospective county players also.
In recent years, a number of GAA managers have experienced health difficulties while in a county role.
Liam Kearns was in charge of Offaly when he passed away at the age of 61 after a short illness in March 2023.
In February 2024, the then-Tyrone manager Feargal Logan had a stroke on the day he was preparing to face Derry in the National League.
Back in July 2022, Cork manager Keith Ricken stepped down from his role due to health reasons, and Kevin McStay took unwell at a Mayo training session last year and had to be kept in a hospital for observation.
And while correlation shouldn’t be assumed as causation, the trend is a worrying one nonetheless.
Only a few short months ago, the Derry manager Ciaran Meenagh told an alarming story at the Ulster championship launch about falling asleep at the wheel of his car while returning from Down training late at night.
As he acknowledged, he got lucky when his car drifted into a wide verge and the only damage was superficial to his car.
Many managers have admitted to an unhealthy obsession with the games, which come at a detriment to personal and family life.
Former Monaghan manager Séamus McEnaney has described it as “like a disease, an addiction”.
It’s an obsession. But there’s nothing beautiful about it.
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