Pep Guardiola agreed to sign for Manchester City four months before the deal was made official, according to reports.
The former Barcelona coach has been a huge success since he swapped Bayern Munich for City with a Carabao Cup win and Premier League title to show for his first two seasons in charge.
The Citizens have made a good start to the current campaign too, as they sit two points ahead of Chelsea and Liverpool, who are joint-second in the table.
And a report in Der Spiegel claims that Guardiola signed his contract to take over as manager on October 10, 2015 despite the announcement only being made public on February 1, 2016.
At that point, Guardiola was only two months into the final year of his contract with German side Bayern Munich, and it is the latest alleged revelation by Football Leaks whistle-blowers in the third of a four-chapter expose on City.
The report continues by saying that City were so desperate to keep the deal under wraps that they moved to try and get a report in the Sunday Mirror removed, which said Guardiola had met City’s director of football Txiki Begiristain in Spain.
The story was published several weeks after October 10 but an alleged leaked email showed team spokesman Simon Heggie telling club officials he would try and get it taken down.
“I’ll call him and tell him we want it removed,” before later allegedly continuing “I’ll send a note around to other media to tell them to ignore it.”
It is understood that City wanted to control when they announced Guardiola without the media cottoning on first. And they did.