If this was Guardiola’s last big Wembley moment, Semenyo was a fitting match-winner | Barney Ronay

One way or another, this was always going to end up being a Pep day. At the final whistle Pep Guardiola didn’t punch the air or really celebrate at all. Instead he walked quite slowly over to the scorer of the only goal, Antoine Semenyo, and vigorously triple-patted his buttocks, then meandered around the edges of the bobbing huddles on the Wembley pitch.

There will be a temptation to look for clues here. Nobody really knows if Guardiola is leaving Manchester City at the end of the season. Contract extension brinkmanship is nothing new, although not with quite so much whispered chat about assistants on the move and leaked replacement plans. But the pensive walk was normal practice. It is one of Guardiola’s many quirks that even in victory he tends to look a little disappointed that the game, this glorious living torture, is now over. Do the thing you love and you’ll never work a day of your life. Do something that grips you with skull-clawing, trouser-ripping energy, and you’ll never quite lose that life-giving buzz, right down to the end of your 591st game, 416th win, and 15th major trophy. Guardiola was the familiar frenzied spectacle throughout this FA Cup final. Dressed for the day in a vanilla-hued yak fur roll neck and country gent slacks, the look of a minor royal cousin on a school visit, he was out in his technical area from the start, arms whirring in those furiously stylised patterns, like a man trying to break the world record for constructing an invisible flatpack wardrobe. If this really is his final big touchline moment, it would be fitting that it should come at Wembley, with a third FA Cup, eighth domestic knockout trophy and 12th medal won on this ground if you chuck in the Community Shield and Barcelona lifting the Champions League. It is often said that Guardiola has been commendably and respectfully obsessed with domestic cups in England. Or just the blanket obsession with winning?

Key points

• There will be a temptation to look for clues here.
• Nobody really knows if Guardiola is leaving Manchester City at the end of the season.
• Contract extension brinkmanship is nothing new, although not with quite so much whispered chat about assistants on the move and leaked replacement plans.
• But the pensive walk was normal practice.
• It is one of Guardiola’s many quirks that even in victory he tends to look a little disappointed that the game, this glorious living torture, is now over.