On the eve of his emotional final match as Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola has made a stunning confession, revealing that his single biggest regret over his legendary decade-long tenure was his brutal treatment of former England goalkeeper Joe Hart.

The 55-year-old tactical mastermind is set to take charge of his final match at the Etihad Stadium against Aston Villa on Sunday, bringing down the curtain on a glittering 10-year reign that yielded 20 trophies, including six Premier League titles and a historic Champions League crown.

Yet, despite his unparalleled success, Guardiola admitted that an executive decision he made just weeks into his appointment in 2016 still weighs heavily on his conscience.

Upon his arrival, Guardiola immediately ruthlessly sidelined Hart—a club icon with 348 appearances over 12 years—shipping him out on loan to Torino without giving him a solitary chance to adapt to his sweeper-keeper system.

“I want to confess, I have regrets. When you take a lot of decisions, a lot, lot of decisions, you make mistakes,” Guardiola confessed in a candid interview with Sky Sports.

“But there is one regret that I have deep inside for many years, that I didn’t give a chance to Joe Hart to be with me to prove himself how good a keeper he was. I should have done, not because… all respect for Claudio [Bravo], all respect for Ede [Ederson] who came in, they were important, but in that moment, I could have said, ‘Okay Joe, let’s try to do it together. If it doesn’t work, okay, we’ll change it’.”

At the time, Hart was an established England regular and had desperately urged the incoming Spaniard to let him prove he could handle the ball-distribution duties required.

However, Guardiola famously remained uncompromising, eventually replacing him permanently with Claudio Bravo and later Ederson. Hart subsequently moved to Burnley, Tottenham Hotspur, and Celtic before retiring.

Reflecting on his past rigidity, Guardiola admitted that his stubborn nature sometimes clouded his management of human beings.

“But it happened. Life is sometimes… I have to take decisions and sometimes I’m not fair enough,” the City boss added. “Maybe with time then and learning… But I regret it from that time. In that moment, I said, ‘I believe in that’. Always I am stubborn in my decisions, when I believe in that. When I have doubts, I talk with people, but when I’m completely sure, 100 per cent, I say, ‘Guys, we have to do it in that way.'”

Guardiola concluded by emphasizing that managing human emotions and dropping players remains the absolute hardest part of football management, insisting that he never intended to cause malice to a player who helped build the modern foundation of Manchester City.

“If in that I failed, I do apologise, but it never, never was my intention or the intention of the club.”