Pep Guardiola's departure: Micah Richards on the legacy of a genius

This is the moment Manchester City have been dreading, but the whole of English football is going to miss Pep Guardiola too.

He's a true legend of the game, and I am gutted he is going - the Premier League just won't be the same without him.

Pep is one of the best managers we've ever seen. The greatest ever? Well, it's hard to disrespect Sir Alex Ferguson when you have that conversation, but those were different times - Pep's the greatest manager of the modern era, that's for sure.

If you look at what they both won - and I know everyone will read this and say City have spent more, which I get - then Pep has won a Treble at Barcelona and a Treble with City. That's incredible in itself.

But the biggest difference between the two is that 'Fergie' was a great manager but Pep is the greatest coach. He has transformed the way football is played in England in a way that no-one has ever done before.

I played against Fergie's teams and the way he galvanised them was incredible. Facing them was horrible because you knew something special could happen and they would fight to the end, and that's coming from someone who played for City. He did it with loads of different sides too.

But as a pundit I've analysed dozens of Pep's games, and he's a genius. It's as simple as that.

When he replaced Manuel Pellegrini in 2016, City already had some very good players so he was not starting from scratch, but he did not just go on to dominate English football for a decade, he changed it too.

Now everyone plays the way City do, passing out from the back. That didn't happen before he arrived.

People have copied that, and other things like his false nine, the inverted full-backs he invented at Bayern Munich when he had Philipp Lahm coming inside, and the same with the ball-playing goalkeeper, which he used from the start at City.

I was gutted when he brought in Claudio Bravo for my mate Joe Hart, but if you listen to Joe now he will tell you he understands why it happened because the team were playing a different kind of football.

It didn't work out with Bravo, but then in came Ederson and he took that part of his position to new heights. Again, that's all on Pep. As a player or pundit, I've not seen another coach do that in this country the way he has.

Pep's never been afraid to move people around either. He sees the player, not the position, I guess, and makes them an important part of his system and style, in the way he wants to use them.

Sometimes he has been criticised for over-thinking or doing something random, where you are left scratching your head. Well, that's what makes him the genius he is.

When it works it is incredible. Like the 2023 Champions League final when City beat Inter Milan in arguably the biggest game in the club's history, and he had a centre-half - John Stones - essentially playing in midfield.

He sees things like that which other managers would never even think of trying. Things that don't appear obvious to us, are to him. And he has done it consistently over the years.

After his first season in England when he didn't win anything and City only made the top four, everyone was saying how his style wouldn't work here, and you can't play that way in the Premier League.

They were wrong, and he has won everything he wanted to win - and kept on winning too.

Pep has won 20 trophies since then, including six Premier League titles, in 10 seasons. That's just not normal. We've never seen a record like that in English football before, and we are probably never going to see anything like it again.

He's won so much because he has kept on reinventing things - it's not just one trick, one idea or one approach that has brought him success. He's never had only one way of winning games, so that has made City very hard to stop.

Sadly, Pep did not bow out at City with a seventh Premier League title.

If he had done, then for me it would have been his greatest triumph, just because of the fact they were down and out a few months ago, with Arsenal playing some of the best football of their lives.

The gap was just too big - but to have still been in contention in the last week of the season was unbelievable. He has still signed off with another domestic double - winning the Carabao Cup and FA Cup in the same season for the second time - and he was in the hunt for another trophy until the very end.

This is just the start for the team he has left behind, though.

Two more City legends, Stones and Bernardo Silva, are also leaving this summer but go through the rest of the team and - from Marc Guehi and Abdukodir Khusanov to Antoine Semenyo and Jeremy Doku - they have all got their best years ahead of them.

Like Erling Haaland, Phil Foden, Rayan Cherki and Nico O'Reilly, they are all 26 or under. This is a young, exciting team which can go on and do whatever they want to.

So, City have got the players to compete for more trophies without Pep, but the big question is who their next manager will be.

If the reports are correct and it is Enzo Maresca they go for, then I can understand why. He knows the club and how Pep worked, and City will know all about him too.

But, if he wanted it, I would have given the job to my old City team-mate Vincent Kompany, after seeing the way his Bayern Munich side played in their Champions League semi-final against Paris St-Germain - especially when they were behind in the first leg.

A lot of managers would have changed the way they played and gone against their principles, but Vinnie didn't. I loved that.

I also remember him talking about his side's win over Real Madrid in the previous round. He was asked if should have gone more defensive when they were ahead and he said no, he wanted to play in a certain way and believed in his players to do that.

I feel like whoever takes over from Pep will have to be loved by the fans to start with.

David Moyes did not have that love when he replaced Fergie at United, and neither did Unai Emery when he took over from Arsene Wenger at Arsenal.

What happened to both of them shows you need that affection when you take over from a legend, because it buys you time if there is a stumble along the way.

Vinnie ticks that box, obviously, and he also plays an attacking brand of football which the City fans would take to.

Maresca is a very good manager, but I feel like Vinnie would have been perfect - I really do.

Micah Richards was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan.