What next for Pep?

Pep Guardiola’s announcement that he will quit Barcelona at the end of the season will have produced two distinct sounds in west London: the fluttering of Roman Abramovich’s checkbook and a groan of despair from his current coach at Chelsea, Roberto di Matteo, who by beating Barcelona may yet prove to have schemed his way out of a job.

There is little doubt that Abramovich will pull out all the stops to hire the coach he had in mind as soon as André Villas-Boas had been shown the door, despite Guardiola’s public intimation that he would be giving the dugout a wide berth for the foreseeable future.

“I don’t know what I will do next but I will not go straight to coaching,” Guardiola told a press conference in the presence of grim-looking senior players, president Sandro Rosell and sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta.

“Four years is an eternity for a coach of Barcelona, four years wear you down and that’s the fundamental reason. I’m sorry for the confusion in recent weeks. I’ve always wanted short contracts because the demands at Barcelona are so big. I am really sorry about having lost that energy but I cannot lie to myself if I don’t have the same energy and excitement as at the beginning, and I knew all along it was my last season. I could have continued but is not what Barça would have deserved.”

I cannot lie to myself if I don’t have the same energy and excitement as at the beginning"

In a typically Barcelona move, assistant coach Tito Vilanova was immediately named as Guardiola’s successor. Vilanova, whose eye wound up on the receiving end of José Mourinho’s thumb during an end-of-game Spanish Supercup mêlée last August, will take charge of Barcelona from the beginning of the 2012-13 season.

“We’ve always said that if the team needs players, we look at home first,” said Zubizarreta in allusion to Barça B. “Who do we have here at home? Tito.”

Vilanova, who played for Barça B before plying his trade across the divisions with teams including Celta and Mallorca, rejoined the club as assistant to Guardiola when the former Spain midfielder took the reins in 2007. He will have little to do, in essence, other than exude a sense of continuity. As might be expected at other clubs with lesser homegrown identity, there will be no mass exodus of players. Indeed, Vilanova will have David Villa at his disposal in September, a luxury Guardiola was denied the past six months after Spain’s record goalscorer fractured a shinbone at the largely irrelevant Club World Cup.

Guardiola, who brought 13 trophies to Camp Nou in the most successful spell in the club’s history, will have his pick of the world’s plum coaching jobs when he does decide to seek a new challenge. AC and Inter Milan, Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham and any number of others will happily break their banks to bring in the Spaniard.

Whether Guardiola’s Midas touch will remain when he does not have Leo Messi, Xavi et al on his teamsheet will be the biggest test of all.