Manchester City fans have feasted on a number of documentaries looking at their amazing feats under Pep Guardiola. This one looks at their alarming decline - and will have Blues just as gripped.
City Studios, the club's in-house broadcasting house, has produced a warts-and-all look at the 2024/25 and 2025/26 seasons under Guardiola that follows the astonishing fall after four consecutive titles and then the battle to bring the team back up to a winning level. It features remarkable detail from dressing rooms to board meetings and some astonishing tales.
The footage is so good that Amazon stepped in to buy it - and given the pain Guardiola's side inflicted on other teams you suspect it won't just be City fans who enjoy these episodes. Set across eight parts, it delves into how everything unravelled for the Premier League champions and then what happened next.
Walker loses it with Guardiola at Anfield
If you want to get a sense of how good this series is going to be, get a load of the dressing room row between Guardiola and Kyle Walker at Anfield. City's captain at the time goes from 0-100 in record time, accusing Guardiola of bringing up his name "every f****** time". When the manager suggests perhaps it is because he is a captain so should take responsibility, Walker shouts back 'YOU DIDN'T WANT ME TO BE CAPTAIN. YOU DIDN'T WANT ME TO BE CAPTAIN'. 30 seconds later, Guardiola is in tears telling his captains that if they want him to leave he will go.
It is unbelievable stuff and certainly puts meat on the bones for the story of Walker's exit halfway through the year and Guardiola's subsequent decision to pick the captain himself next season for the first time in his City career. It is rather convenient however that it serves as such a striking illustration of why the season went so badly.
De Bruyne breaks down
Following Walker's exit, Kevin De Bruyne was hit with a gut punch later in the season that his contract would not be renewed after nine years at the Etihad. The Belgian took it badly - badly enough for CEO Ferran Soriano to warn chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak that he wasn't happy and they should do everything they could to make sure his exit received the maximum respect.
Cut to an exit interview for De Bruyne with club media and he is teed up to ask what his family will miss most. The club legend starts to answer but can't continue, sobbing as he explains that his kids don't want to leave and he is no longer making football decisions just for himself.
Having arrived at City before any of his children were born, it's a striking reminder that footballers are humans as well and the eye-watering money they receive in their careers doesn't change how they feel just like anybody else.
Cherki gets badmouthed
Part of the second episode features several recruitment meetings as it properly announces Hugo Viana to the club hierarchy as he takes over from Txiki Begiristain. Rayan Cherki is seen as an option to replace De Bruyne but - remember these stories from a year ago? - there are questions about his character.
Viana and Begiristain get one bad report, but begin to be convinced that this is the anomaly. As chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak hears more and more, he becomes intent on striking before any other clubs realise.
With City having committed to doing the deal, there's then a brilliant moment from Cherki while he is doing his medical that shows off his personality.
Pep's divorce comes up a LOT
Guardiola mentions his divorce a lot. Like, a lot. His right-hand man Manuel Estiarte mentions it to explain Guardiola's behaviour changing around a certain point, and it is brought up by the manager in more than one dressing room speech. One of the themes of the series is the human side of Guardiola that comes to the fore in his final two seasons at the club more than anyone else has ever seen.
“I never had to go to the locker room to speak to the players. Only once. Only once. Because they were worried because Pep was anxious, he was sad, he was different. And only I knew the reason," said Estiarte. "And I said to the team, please you have to understand. You’re not playing with a coach who can be a bit impulsive, who can be a bit intense, who can sometimes be up and down.
"You’re seeing a human being. He’s getting a divorce. This is a topic I don’t want to talk about too much because it’s personal, but it was necessary for the team not only to visualise Pep as manager but for the first time to see Pep as a human being. Because, at the end, he is a human being."
Guardiola threatens players after Leverkusen - and angers board
City's home game with Leverkusen was a defining moment in the 2025/26 season. Guardiola made ten changes in order to give other players in the squad a chance to impress him, only for them to turn in a dismal performance that set the team's chances back; chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak tells Soriano afterwards that he is so angry for the unnecessary risk the manager has taken that he has not been able to bring himself to message him for days.
The fury of Guardiola comes pouring out in the dressing room afterwards as he slams the performance as a disgrace, shouts at them for giving nothing back to him when he has given up his marriage and his personal life in order to work for them, and then makes it clear he will not tolerate any unhappiness from players being left out in the future.
"You know what's going to happen? You're going to have another manager," he says in the middle of an extraordinary speech. "You will have another manager. I have to be worried for the next selection now I have to be worried? When I see one f****** [sad] face at the end of the season, I kill you. When I see your f****** face complaining or something when I make my decisions, I f****** kill you."
What next for Guardiola?
That is the question that everybody has wanted an answer to since Guardiola decided to leave. His friends doubt that he can rest, and those in charge of appointing the next Italy manager certainly gave the idea that he is already keen to return to work, but an interview at the end of the documentary suggests that the former City boss may take more time than people think before coming back as he focuses on his own life.
"I don’t even know myself what I’m going to do, honestly. I don’t know. But for sure, I will not be… it will be difficult to come back," he said. My feeling today is it will be difficult to come back. I need to refresh many things in my personal life.
"And professional, what I’ve found, I need to find myself a little bit in different thing. Sitting and seeing time go by or the time crosses in front of you. There is a word in Catalonia, badar - it is like this [zoned out]. So do that. That is one of my main targets I want to do."
A Beautiful Obsession launches exclusively on Prime Video in UK & Ireland 19 August 2026.
