Pep Guardiola used the painful divorce from wife Cristina Serra as a motivational tool during team talks amid a worst-ever run as Manchester City manager.
While presiding over a wretched stretch of nine defeats in 12 games, the Catalan dug deep into his soul in an attempt to shock City players into action.
After losing 2-0 away at Juventus in the Champions League, a visibly frustrated Guardiola compared the separation to a sharp decline in performances from his team.
The admission to his players about the divorce in December 2024 came weeks before news of the split publicly emerged, with Guardiola and Serra having only told a handful of close confidantes.
Footage of the team talk is revealed on the Prime Video documentary, A Beautiful Obsession, charting Guardiola’s final two years at the helm.
‘Guys, I want to confess something,’ he said inside the Allianz Arena. ‘I’m f****** divorced from the most beautiful woman in your planet. My wife. My ex-wife.
Pep Guardiola told his Man City stars he was divorcing ‘the most beautiful woman in our planet’ in an emotional dressing room moment filmed by Amazon Prime
Guardiola’s painful divorce from wife Cristina Serra played out to a backdrop of bad Man City performances in 2024-25
‘I love her unbelievably! But we lost the passion. For many reasons, 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 [just] play or because you have something inside? Where is the passion?
‘In your life, whatever you are going to do, do it with passion. I don’t want good players. I want players with passion.’
City would go on to lose against Manchester United and Aston Villa in the week after that, before then rediscovering some form after New Year, eventually securing a top three finish and reaching the FA Cup final.
‘I never had to go to the locker room to speak to the players – only once,’ revealed Guardiola’s confidante and head of player protocol Manel Estiarte of a meeting before his team talk at Juventus. ‘Because they were worried because Pep was anxious. He was sad. He was different. And only I knew the reason.
‘And I said to them, “please you have to understand. You’re not playing with a coach who can be a bit impulsive, who can be a bit intense. You’re seeing a human being. He’s getting a divorce.”
‘It was necessary for the team not only to visualise Pep as a manager but for the first time to see Pep as a human being.’
The divorce is a theme running through the four-part series. On camera, Guardiola openly discussed how he had to ‘settle a little bit’ in his private life.
Guardiola was with Serra for 30 years, having married in 2014. They share three children
Guardiola told his stars about the breakdown of his marriage in an emotional moment
Serra lived with Guardiola for the first three years of his tenure at the Etihad Stadium, moving back to Barcelona with their youngest daughter Valentina in 2019. The pair lived apart for five years before divorcing.
And a year after the outburst in Turin, the manager was again referencing Serra. Following a galling 2-0 defeat by Bayer Leverkusen, for which Guardiola had made a surprising 10 changes, he let loose on his players.
At the end of an emotional, expletive-laden address, he said: ‘I live my life, my divorce… and my family is away for all of you. What do you give back? The f****** performance you have done, all of you. It’s a disgrace, guys.’
A Beautiful Obsession launches exclusively on Prime Video in UK & Ireland 19 August 2026
