Pep Guardiola's Contract Situation at Bayern Munich Points to Barcelona Return

In other circumstances, Pep Guardiola might have stayed at Barcelona long enough to become an Arsene Wenger or Sir Alex Ferguson-type figure at the Catalan club.

Appointed Barcelona B coach following his retirement from Mexican outfit Dorados de Sinaloa, in 2008 he was promoted to the top job with the senior team by then-president Joan Laporta, with whom the aspiring boss quickly struck a productive working relationship.

Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press

With Guardiola overseeing matters on the pitch and Laporta looking after the club's administration, Barcelona became the most dominant club side in a generation—winning a pair of Spanish titles, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League (they did the treble in 2009) before Sandro Rosell's election as president in 2010.

Given that his rise to power was messy, underhanded and a football version of a palace coup, Rosell quickly went about undoing what Laporta had set up, and in the years that followed, he managed to alienate himself from some of the club's most iconic figures.

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Guardiola was among them. He departed Camp Nou in 2012, spent a year abroad and then accepted a job at Bayern Munich.

"In principle I won't coach Barcelona again," he told Mundo Deportivo, as per the Daily Mail, last November.

Read between the lines, and the 44-year-old's "principle" could have well been in reference to the current Barcelona board, which was taken over by Josep Maria Bartomeu following Rosell's January 2014 resignation in the wake of allegations the club had "misappropriated funds" in the Neymar acquisition, as reported at the time by the Guardian.

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Last April, another Barcelona figure—Johan Cruyff—railed against the club's administration in an interview with El Mundo and relayed by Inside Spanish Football.

"Those who know least are those who are making the decisions," he said. "Those who are leading are those who want to take advantage of football as a business."

He added: "The best thing for Barca would be for Pep Guardiola to return. If Joan Laporta returns as president then the best thing I will say he could do is sign Pep."

It's not an outrageous scenario.

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Earlier this month, Andoni Zubizarreta was sacked as Barcelona director of football, as per a club statement, and Carles Puyol—a stalwart defender turned assistant sporting director—revealed his decision to resign his post via Facebook.

In light of the turmoil at board level, Bartomeu moved up elections by a year to this spring, according to Goal, and in a cryptic Facebook message, highlighted by Sport, Laporta seemed to suggest he'd be throwing his hat into the ring in a bid to win back his old job.

"Right now I am threading a needle with a purpose which I will not reveal, but I am starting to mend it," he wrote, quoting the poet Miquel Marti i Pol, alongside a picture of himself with a Barcelona shirt.

"

Barcelona are preparing to hold presidential elections on Sunday 12 July 2015, although Sunday 5 July has not yet been ruled out either [md]

— barcastuff (@barcastuff) January 15, 2015"

Meanwhile, Monday reports had Guardiola stalling on a contract extension with Bayern, according to the Guardian.

"We still have time to talk about [a contract] after the end of the season in the summer," he said. "Football is today like that and completely different the next day."

By the day he's speaking of, it's possible Laporta will be back on the Camp Nou throne—an occurrence that would almost certainly see Barcelona courting the man who delivered the most glorious period in its history.

It could well be that Guardiola's time at the club never really came to an end but was merely interrupted.