分类： sports

In a revealing new interview with Manchester City’s official media channels, club chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak has pulled back the curtain on Pep Guardiola’s decade-long tenure, disclosing that the legendary manager considered stepping down nearly 100 times during his spell at the Etihad Stadium before confirming his departure at the end of the 2024-25 season.

Guardiola leaves the club this summer after a historic 10-year reign that cemented his status as one of the greatest managers in modern football, amassing 20 major trophies including six Premier League titles, one Champions League crown, and a domestic FA Cup and League Cup double in his final campaign at the helm. The 55-year-old Spaniard formally stepped down after acknowledging he no longer held the same level of energy required to push the club to new heights.

While Guardiola’s trophy haul speaks to unparalleled success at Manchester City, Khaldoon opened up about the emotional toll that elite top-flight management takes, noting that the passionate Spaniard regularly raised the idea of resigning during the inevitable low points of his decade in charge. “Inevitably over these last 10 years we’ve had a lot of ups and some downs, and in the downs, he must have quit 100 times over these 10 years, just so you know, just for the record,” the chairman shared on Thursday.

Khaldoon drew a parallel to the classic fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, explaining that Guardiola’s frequent resignation talks were rarely a serious intention to leave, and required a steady hand from the club’s leadership to navigate. “In the case of Pep, when he says ‘I quit’, it doesn’t mean he’s quitting. You don’t take it that seriously – you have to manage him,” he said. “Whenever he quits or whenever he thinks it’s time, I will always convince him to come back, until the time where I know it’s actually the real time – and we reached that. I knew it and that’s why I didn’t fight it.”

The announcement of Guardiola’s exit came after back-to-back seasons without a Premier League title, with City finishing seven points adrift of 2024-25 champions Arsenal. This run of form has sparked widespread speculation that the club’s dominant era may be coming to an end, but Khaldoon pushed back firmly against those claims, asserting that the club is still far from its peak. “We are far from peaked. We are used to – because it’s in our DNA – winning. This is a club that is designed, built to win,” he said. “Obviously with the additions we’re going to make this summer, I am very confident. I think next year we’re going to come back very strong.”

As the club prepares to enter a new era, it is widely expected that former Chelsea manager and one-time Guardiola assistant Enzo Maresca will be named as the new head coach in the coming days. Maresca boasts an impressive resume, having lifted the UEFA Conference League and Club World Cup during his time at Chelsea, and gained first-hand experience of City’s playing philosophy during the 2022-23 season working alongside Guardiola.

When questioned about the club’s succession process, Khaldoon emphasized that the hiring process had been thorough and methodical, with full alignment on the chosen candidate. “What I can say at the moment is we’ve gone through a very thoughtful and structured process and the team is convinced, I am convinced, that we will bring in the right manager for this club,” he said. “Just be patient with us. Very soon we’ll announce it and you will be very comfortable that we have selected and brought in the best manager possible.”

The landscape of the 2025 French Open men’s singles draw has been turned upside down following stunning early exits of the tournament’s top title contenders, leaving Germany’s Alexander Zverev as the undisputed favorite to claim his first career Grand Slam trophy when the semi-finals kick off on Friday. Even as the 29-year-old second seed brushes off questions about favorite status, the weight of expectation sits firmly on his shoulders heading into his clash against 26th seed Jakub Mensik of the Czech Republic. The winner of that match will go on to face either Italy’s Flavio Cobolli or Matteo Arnaldi in Sunday’s Roland Garros final, completing an unexpected final four bracket.

After world No. 1 Jannik Sinner and 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic both departed the tournament far earlier than predicted, Zverev has emerged as the clear pick to end his run as one of tennis’s most high-profile nearly-men. The 2020 Olympic gold medalist has been in imperious form through the first two weeks of the clay-court major, dropping just one set across five matches to secure his place in the final four. His most recent victory, a straight-sets quarter-final win over rising Spanish teenager Rafael Jodar, took less than two and a half hours and served as further proof of his sharpness entering the semi-finals.

Despite being the highest-ranked, most experienced and most decorated player remaining in the draw, Zverev says he is blocking out all noise about a potential first title and focusing solely on his upcoming opponent. “As I said before, I don’t particularly care about being the favourite,” Zverev told reporters after his quarter-final win. “I focus on next match, and I focus on the opponent as they cross the net, and that’s the only thing that I can control.”

Standing between Zverev and a fourth Grand Slam final is 20-year-old Mensik, who is into the final four of a major for the first time in his young career. The 196cm serving powerhouse has already notched a career-defining title, upsetting Djokovic to win the 2024 Miami Open, and has fought through a tough draw to reach this stage at Roland Garros. His straight-sets quarter-final victory over Brazilian breakout star Joao Fonseca cemented his status as one of the most exciting young prospects on the ATP Tour, and he is not intimidated by the challenge of facing the tournament favorite. The pair have met once before this season, with Zverev claiming a tight three-set win on the clay of Madrid. “The match with Sascha in Madrid, of course, it was a close one. It was best-of-three,” Mensik noted. “Right now it’s a different situation… I would say bigger match, best-of-five. I’m excited for the challenge.”

The second semi-final will make Grand Slam history, as it pits two Italian players against each other in the men’s draw for the first time ever. Pre-tournament predictions expected Italy’s top star Sinner to be in this position, but instead it is 10th seed Flavio Cobolli and unseeded Matteo Arnaldi who will contest an all-Italian semi-final for a spot in the final.

Cobolli, ranked 10th in the world, booked his first ever Grand Slam semi-final spot with a tight victory over Canada’s fourth seed Felix Auger-Aliassime on Court Philippe Chatrier, and described the moment as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “I felt like this is the chance of my life,” Cobolli said after the win. His opponent Arnaldi advanced to the semi-finals without hitting a shot in his quarter-final, as compatriot Matteo Berrettini was forced to withdraw due to injury. Currently ranked 104th in the world, Arnaldi is enjoying his best ever Grand Slam performance after returning from a recent injury layoff, and has spent more time on court than any other semi-finalist this fortnight. Despite the heavy workload, he says he has plenty of energy left for the match. “I have been playing a lot, but at the same time, I’m happy to be on court and to spend time on court, because I missed playing,” Arnaldi said. “I for sure have some energy left for the next matches.”

The pair share a 1-1 head-to-head record, and their meeting on Friday will be a rematch of the 2024 French Open second round, where Cobolli claimed a four-set win. Cobolli says the historic semi-final is a win for Italian tennis regardless of who comes out on top. “For sure it will be another derby, but I think we have to be happy for Italian tennis,” Cobolli said. “Another Italian, apart from Sinner and Lorenzo (Musetti), are in the final this week. So we have to be happy, and we have to enjoy that match.”

In an extraordinary story of survival that has stunned the global mountaineering community, a Nepali climbing guide declared lost and presumed dead after six days stranded on Mount Everest has been rescued alive, having crawled nearly the entire distance to Base Camp unaided, officials confirmed to AFP Thursday.

Fifty-something Dawa Sherpa, a veteran guide widely known by the nickname “Hillary” in honor of legendary Everest pioneer Edmund Hillary, disappeared from the upper slopes of the world’s highest peak amid brutal weather conditions in the early hours of May 30. He was located Thursday morning near Base Camp by personnel from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC), a Nepali organization tasked with maintaining climbing routes and removing discarded waste from the mountain.

“He was found by an SPCC team this morning close to base camp — he was crawling down,” Pemba Sherpa, a representative from 8K Expeditions, the company that coordinated the search and rescue operation, told reporters. A rescue helicopter airlifted the climber directly to Kathmandu, where an AFP on-site team observed him being carried from the aircraft on a stretcher and transferred to HAMS Hospital for treatment.

Pemba Sherpa added that after consulting with attending physicians, the guide is conscious and only suffering from minor frostbite, with no other life-threatening injuries. His wife, Damu Sherpa, spoke from the hospital Thursday, describing her family’s overwhelming shock and joy at the miracle outcome. “We had given up all hope, we even began traditional death puja prayers for his soul yesterday,” she shared. “Hearing he was alive was more happiness than we ever dared to imagine.”

The events that led to Dawa Sherpa being stranded began on the evening of May 29, when he guided former British Royal Marine and climber Chris Thrall to a successful summit of the 8,849-meter peak by approximately 5:00 pm. Before Dawa Sherpa went missing, Thrall had posted an Instagram tribute Wednesday mourning what he believed was his guide’s passing, calling him an “absolute gentle giant of a man and a true ‘tiger of the mountains’”.

Thrall recounted that the pair began their descent from Camp Four, which sits roughly 7,950 meters above sea level just below the oxygen-starved “death zone,” on May 30. As they climbed down, Dawa Sherpa paused to rest, telling Thrall to continue ahead without him — a common occurrence between guides and clients on large expeditions. As Thrall moved down, he encountered a Polish climber in critical condition: the mountaineer had exhausted his supplementary oxygen, already developed frostbite, and was at high risk of deadly hypothermia.

This season’s summit conditions were unusually harsh, Thrall explained: what is typically a five-day round trip to the summit stretched to 11 days for his team. Faced with an impossible choice, Thrall opted to assist the imperiled Polish climber, sharing his own oxygen supply as the pair descended. The trip that normally takes just two hours to Camp Three took 11 hours due to severe conditions, leaving Thrall unable to return for Dawa Sherpa.

Search teams launched efforts to locate the missing guide immediately, but harsh weather and the timing of the expedition — one of the final permitted climbs of the spring season, when few other climbers remain on the mountain — left no trace of him until Thursday’s unexpected discovery. Five other climbers, two Indian mountaineers and three Nepali guides, have already lost their lives on Everest during the 2026 spring climbing season. Initial counts from Nepali authorities show that more than 1,000 climbers have summited the peak this season, making it the busiest climbing season in Everest’s history.