Manchester City are resigned to losing Pep Guardiola as their manager at the end of the season, sources told ESPN.

A number of players and staff believe Guardiola will quit this summer after 10 years at the Etihad Stadium.

The coach, 55, has repeatedly dodged questions about his future.

Sources close to City insisted “nothing has changed” when approached by ESPN on Monday.

Guardiola is under contract until 2027 but has a break clause that allows him to leave at the end of the current campaign.

A number of other sources have confirmed that Guardiola is expected to depart.

Club bosses, however, are keen to avoid distractions while the team is still in the Premier League title race and have yet to officially confirm Guardiola’s decision.

After Arsenal won 1-0 against Burnley at the Emirates on Monday, City must beat Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium on Tuesday or Mikel Arteta’s team will be crowed champions for the first time since 2004.

Sources have told ESPN that former Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca is City’s top choice to replace Guardiola.

Maresca left Stamford Bridge in January and has been sounded out about the role at the Etihad, where he previously served as Guardiola’s assistant.

Guardiola won his 20th trophy as City boss with the 1-0 victory over Chelsea in the FA Cup final Saturday.

The club has planned a celebration event to parade both the FA Cup and Carabao Cup, won against Arsenal in March, the day after the final game of the season against Aston Villa.

City are also set to rename a stand at the Etihad in honor of Guardiola, sources told ESPN.

The 29-year-old twice battled back from a break down in the second set before storming through the decider to set up a second-round encounter with Spain’s Leyre Romero Gormaz.

There was also success for Britons Toby Samuel and Jay Clarke on the Paris clay.

Samuel came through a 24-point tie-break in the first set before dispatching American seventh seed Martin Damm 7-6 (13-11) 6-2.

His reward is a meeting with Belgian veteran and former world number seven David Goffin, who is set to retire at the end of the season.

Clarke, meanwhile, will face French hope Thomas Faurel after beating 6-2 6-2 Australian 23rd seed Dane Sweeney 6-2 6-2.

There was disappointment for Britain’s world number 264 Charles Broom, who missed three match points in a 4-6 7-6 (11-9) 6-4 loss to France’s Ugo Blanchet, who is 104 places above him in the rankings.

Jack Pinnington Jones also fell 3-6 7-6 (7-5) 7-5 to Ukraine’s Vitaliy Sachko after a tight third set that included seven breaks of serve.

Elsewhere, former US Open champion and 2018 Roland Garros runner-up Sloane Stephens beat fellow American Carol Youngsuh Lee 6-3 6-2.

Players must win three matches to qualify for the French Open main draw, which begins on Sunday, 24 May.

Fellow Britons Emma Raducanu, Cameron Norrie, Katie Boulter, Francesca Jones and Jacob Fearnley all have direct entry into the main draw, but Jack Draper and Sonay Kartal are missing with injury.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Outside the meeting rooms at a swanky resort in Southern California, the Big Ten displayed some signature art for the league’s annual meetings.

It prominently featured three of the national championship trophies won by the conference this year — Indiana‘s football trophy and the basketball trophies won by the UCLA women and Michigan men.

Coming off three consecutive national titles in football, the Big Ten’s voice will be heard louder this offseason. The league formally invited reporters to the spring meetings, a departure from the recent past and a move that mimics the heavily covered SEC meetings that take place annually in Florida after Memorial Day.

“I just felt like if messages were getting out of one part of the country and not the other part of the country, some of the things that we wanted to share that we really believe in was getting missed,” said Washington football coach Jedd Fisch, who advocated for more coverage of the meetings.

Fisch rattled off the names of the past six football teams to play for the national championship — Washington, Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Indiana and Miami. None are in the SEC.

“I think if we continued to not express that,” he said of the Big Ten’s message, “it was going to be much harder for the whole nation to understand where we’re coming from.”

It’s clear from the early snippets of conversation that the Big Ten coaches remain convicted on moving to a 24-team College Football Playoff, an idea that began in the conference less than a year ago and has gained support across the ACC and Big 12.

Whether the idea gains traction at the highest levels of the SEC will be a question that looms over the sport next week, as it is clearly the model favored by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti.

Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck said the popularity of the 24-team CFP idea comes from goal of having more meaningful November games across the league.

“It’s got tremendous steam and power behind it,” Fleck said, “especially from the 18 head coaches in the Big Ten. When you do a lot of things that everybody’s 18-for-18 for what we should do, I think it speaks volumes.”

“I just felt like if messages were getting out of one part of the country and not the other part of the country, some of the things that we wanted to share that we really believe in was getting missed.”

Washington football coach Jedd Fisch

The idea would have to coincide with other changes, including the elimination of conference title games and moving the start of the season to Week 0. It would also mean the football season would have to end earlier, as this upcoming season culminates Jan. 25, 2027.

“The season needs to be pushed up,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said. “We need to finish the season much sooner. Let’s have this all done by the first week in January so we have a season that makes sense.”

One topic that generated the most spirited discussion Sunday was a controversial new punting alignment rule that passed this year. The Big Ten coaches were strongly against it, as they have deemed it nearly impossible to officiate.

An idea that coaches brought up is that college football should have its own competition committee, much like the NFL, to navigate such issues.

Armagh captain Aidan Forker said that his side “were due one” as they ended an 18-year wait for an Ulster Championship title with a thrilling 2-28 to 0-25 win over Monaghan after extra time.

Playing in their fourth successive Ulster final, having lost the previous three, Kieran McGeeney’s side led by seven at one stage of the second half at Clones and looked on course for victory before Monaghan fought back to force extra time.

Oisin O’Neill’s goal early in extra time proved crucial as the Orchard County picked up a 15th Ulster title and a first since 2008, with Forker keen to savour the occasion after their recent heartbreak in the competition.

“It’s something I’ve seen in my head for a long time [lifting the Anglo Celt-Cup]. Obviously the last number of years have been tough, but just delighted for the group and the boys who just stuck at it,” he told BBC Sport NI.

“So happy for the management team too, we’ve had some tough days in Ulster. The first six or seven years of my career in Armagh were defeats, four finals in a row, I think we were due one.”

Forker believes that Armagh used their experience of previous final defeats to their advantage and that fitness work done in the lead up to the Clones decider helped them to last the course and pick Monaghan off in extra time.

“We’ve been here before. We were there with Tyrone in the first round [a one-point extra-time victory in April] and we know the work we’ve done in terms of training and it won out in terms of our legs at the end, we started well in extra time and took our simple scores,” he added.

“Delighted it all came together. We were deserved winners in the end.”