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At home with Pep Guardiola and his 700 guinea pigs

Hola. Pep here. Man City manager. Roll neck aficionado. One of the few examples your wife is thinking of when she sees your receding hairline and unconvincingly says ‘bald men can be sexy too’. 

Welcome to the chic Manchester penthouse apartment I share with my family and roughly 700 guinea pigs. Please excuse the smell. 

You might wonder why a sophisticated, celebrated European football coach like myself would want to live with several hundred small rodents. Let me explain. Growing up, my parents would never buy me a pet. Not a gecko, not a lemur, not a cat. Nada.

I used this anger to fuel my rise through La Masia and into the first team at Barcelona. My teammates bought sports cars and Rolex watches, but instead I took the bus to my childhood pet store and bought my first guinea pig. The next day, I went back with a duffel bag and bought 27 more. The next day I bought the pet shop. Then I sold it back for a big loss. I had no idea how to run a pet shop.

But the guinea pig addiction stayed. Every goal I scored I splashed out on a new cavy. Every assist. Every Man of the Match award. Before long I had more than 200.

As they only live around five years, since the start of my career I must have owned 30,000, all named after footballers – people I played with, played against or even managed. From little Roy Keane to squeaky Ronaldinho.

As you can see, I let all 700 roam wild and free across my luxury 2,400 square foot loft apartment. I tell them ‘mi casa es tu casa’. They don’t understand, obviously, because they’re guinea pigs. Every fortnight I’ll attempt a headcount, mainly because they burrowed into the lift shaft once, chewed the wires and started a guinea pig bonfire.

Guinea pigs have been responsible for some of my best tactics. The average Guinea is active 20 hours a day. This led me to develop my brand of high-pressure football. I once saw two guinea pigs endlessly rolling a grape back and forth with their snouts. I’m not saying that led to the invention of Tiki Taka football. But it certainly didn’t hurt.

My office door at Man City even has a tiny guinea pig flap in it and – full disclosure – the room absolutely stinks. Some of the best deals I’ve ever landed happened because people just wanted to get out of there. D’you think Dortmund wanted to sell Erling Haaland for just £50m? Did they bollocks. But you try negotiating with the stench of guinea pig urine and seven of them nibbling at your German designer slacks.

Sadly the guinea pigs are now banished to my home after one stowed away in Kevin De Bruyne’s wash bag, jumped out and bit his wife. Fear not though. I’ll soon sell him to the Saudi league and my several hundred adored pets will joyously return to the Etihad.

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Your closest friends and other people you should never discuss your sex life with

LEADING a rich and sordid sex life and want to share the raunchy details with someone? Here’s who to avoid opening up to.

Your closest friends

As men have known for centuries, the closest friendships are maintained by exchanging as little information as possible. Sharing deeply personal details like your surname or your favourite colour can jeopardise your relationship. Regaling them with your bedroom antics will only provide your friends with ammunition for future banter. You’re safer telling them your bank account details.

Anyone in your family

You don’t want to hear about how your parents solemnly conducted missionary reproduction once, or twice if you have a sibling, and they don’t want to know that you’re a member of the mile-high club. Telling siblings, cousins and uncles about your erotic misadventures will likely induce vomiting, however your sex-starved grandad might be too keen to hear about it, so remain tight-lipped for your own sake.

Your colleagues

Sure, your work bestie might feel like a safe person to open up to, but don’t fall for their bullshit. Once they’ve learnt that you went to a key party they’ll be sure to mention it to your boss when the opportunity for a promotion comes around. That would be unprofessional, but so is engaging in anything but robot-like communication with your co-workers. ‘Iain’s off with diarrhoea,’ is as raunchy as it should get.

Strangers in the street

Stopping a stranger in the street to tell them you dabbled in a spot of rimming last night is a bad idea, even in these progressive times. Even people at Pride festivals gloss over the sexual aspect of their lives by walking down the street en masse and waving little rainbow flags. You could learn a lot from their retiring modesty.

Catholic priests

Catholic priests are old hands when it comes to hearing people’s confessions and keeping them to themselves, so you’re safe in that regard. They’re incredibly judgemental though, so even as you test the water by saying you once fingered your girlfriend out of wedlock, you’ll get an earful about ‘sin’ and have to spend the next 12 hours fiddling with your rosary. 

Your partner

Yes, your partner remembers when you went down on them and that time they handcuffed you to the bed, because they were there and they have a functioning memory. Don’t drain all the fun out of sex by talking about it afterwards – keep the home fires burning by initiating more sex. Also, if you get them confused with an ex and recount a particularly mindblowing shag with them, you are totally f**ked.

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