From flannel shirts to herringbone tailoring, Pep Guardiola’s stylistic pivot hints at a man renegotiating his identity in the twilight of his footballing era
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Last Tuesday, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola lost to Real Madrid in a £270 shirt.
The grungy flannel number from the cult Swedish menswear brand Our Legacy was so noteworthy it consumed more post-match oxygen than the news that Manchester City had been dumped out of the Champions League before the quarter-finals. Never mind that Guardiola is beginning to look bereft of ideas for the first time in his career. All anyone cared about was whether he’d hired a stylist.
It’s hard to imagine a footballer’s outfit generating this much attention, but where male managers are concerned, certain rules are still very much in force. This week’s Carabao Cup final against Arsenal at Wembley saw Guardiola wearing a navy turtleneck and brown wool herringbone trousers, an outfit that waged a deliberate campaign of gen X reinvention. Having revolutionised basically every aspect of the English game in his decade at City, it seems his final revolution is changing what it’s possible for a manager to wear on the touchline.
