FCBARCELONA.CAT

20.01.2010 15:26

Guardiola: "I feel strong enough to carry on"

Anna Segura

Guardiola told a packed press conference on Wednesday morning why he had decided to extend his contract for another year and why it had been announced at this particular moment.

At 11 am Josep Guardiola appeared on the training grounds and two and a half hours later he was back in the Camp Nou, together with Joan Laporta and Txiki Begiristain, to announce that he was extending his deal for another year.

An uncomfortable situation

Sincere as always, Guardiola confirmed that he would have preferred to wait until the end of the season but that he had changed his mind after the team was eliminated from the Spanish Cup: “It makes the weeks seem longer”. This circumstance, more than the fact of it being an election year, had generated, “a situation that was already uncomfortable for everyone – we had to kill off the matter”.

Nowhere better than Barça

Guardiola came up through the Barça youth ranks, starred in the first team and has now managed the reserves and the first team. As such he knows that, “I couldn’t be better anywhere else”. “I feel strong enough to carry on. I don’t want to be here for what we’ve done but for what we must do now”.

He thanked people for their support but emphasized: “Sooner or later I’ll stop being the manager of Barça. We know that anything can happen in four months. What can seem obvious now might not be in four months’ time”.

Club elections

Guardiola has already made it clear that the players will not be affected by the election process for the Club presidency that is expected to begin very soon. And he stressed that he had no worries about his own contractual position when the new president takes charge: “We’ll talk about the new contract with calm. It’ll be good for the new president to know me and find out what we both think”.