Man City's Begiristain set to leave club in summer

Manchester City director of football Txiki Begiristain is set to leave the club at the end of the season.

The 60-year-old Spaniard joined City in 2012 and was instrumental in bringing Pep Guardiola to the club as manager four years later.

Begiristain was a former team-mate of Guardiola at Barcelona and with the Spain national side.

As Barca's director of football, he was influential in Guardiola being named manager in 2008 although he left the Catalan giants two years later.

He has been repeatedly praised by Guardiola for the work he has done behind the scenes with City's recruitment.

Sources told BBC Sport that this season will be his last at the club.

The news comes as Guardiola enters the final months of his current contract.

Asked about his situation on Friday before his side's 3-2 win over Fulham, Guardiola said: "I said at the beginning [of the season that] I'm not going to talk about this subject. What will happen will happen."

With Begiristain, Guardiola and chief executive Ferran Soriano working in tandem, City have become the dominant force in the English game, winning six of the past seven Premier League titles.

Their current run of four in a row is an English league record and in 2023 they became only the second English side to complete the Treble as they won the Champions League for the first time.

This news also comes in a week where there has been a verdict in City's legal case against the Premier League over the league's rules on commercial deals involving clubs' owners, with both sides claiming victory.

That case is not directly related to the Premier League disciplinary commission which is underway into 115 charges against City for allegedly breaching its financial regulations, some of which date back to 2009.