Pep Guardiola reveals details of first conversations with Manchester City’s new director of football Hugo Viana | OneFootball

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has revealed the nature of his first interactions with the club’s incoming director of football, Hugo Viana.

The 42-year-old will be tasked with one of the most important summer transfer windows in Manchester City’s time working with Pep Guardiola in the coming months, with the first-team squad in need of a significant refresh.

That comes off the back of a hugely difficult campaign for the club that saw them relinquish their Premier League title of the last four seasons in a row in December, while they also failed to make the last-16 of the UEFA Champions League for the first time since 2012.

One of the first big decisions has already been confirmed by the club as they opted not to hand Kevin De Bruyne a new contract beyond this summer, meaning a decade-long, trophy-laden spell with the Belgian football icon will conclude upon the end of the season.

And having arrived in Manchester on a full-time basis earlier this month, the club has now had opportunity to speak and integrate Hugo Viana into their operation as plans for the summer market get firmly underway.

Speaking to reporters during recent media duties, manager Pep Guardiola was quizzed on Viana’s first week at Manchester City, having started full-time work at the City Football Academy earlier this month ahead of replacing Txiki Begiristain in the summer.

“Yeah, we talked… Comparing the relationship with Txiki, we are together since we played together in Barcelona. We were almost teenagers. So it’s a life, I would say we shared. But two relations never are the same,” Guardiola said.

“But what I know, heard, and experienced in a short time, it will be so easy to communicate and work together. He’s a perfect replacement… The way he envisions football, the way we talk, the composure that is quite (like) Txiki – not stressed like me, for example. The balance is more calm and hopefully he can express himself.”

Guardiola continued, “I asked him, ‘Forget about what we’ve done. We need your vision, you don’t come to follow just what we’ve done in the past. So let us talk. What you see of the team, many months watching us. What do you think? What can we do better? What is your feeling?’

“Back and forth opinions and opinions, and that is when you come up with the best opinions. So I don’t want to be clapped, just the manager all the time. No, it’s not about that, and we never worked like that.

“I rely a lot on my sporting director and they give me the teams or players they believe is the best for the team and as a manager, the staff, we have to lift them and you know, get the best of them.”

Over the course of the coming weeks, Viana and Begiristain will finalise their priority transfer targets for a summer transfer window that some believe could see a further four or more new players come into Pep Guardiola’s squad.

The central midfield ranks are most likely to see investment, with Bayer Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz viewed as the ideal successor to Kevin De Bruyne, while full-back could see a revival of interest first sparked in January over Juventus and Italy’s Andrea Cambiaso.