Oscar Bobb arrived at Manchester City‘s City Football Academy in the summer of 2019, just sixteen years old and already well known across European youth football circles. The Norwegian winger had come through Valerenga’s youth setup in Oslo before brief flirtations with Porto‘s academy brought him attention well beyond Scandinavia. City moved decisively, bringing him across to Manchester as one of the most promising young talents in their recruitment pipeline.
From his very first season, Bobb made an impression quickly; direct, technically sharp, and comfortable in tight spaces, and the club’s Under-18 side won back-to-back Premier League titles in 2019/20 and 2020/21 with the Norwegian at the heart of their attacking play. Promoted into the Elite Development Squad, he kept climbing steadily, collecting consecutive Premier League 2 titles and winning the EDS Player of the Year award in both 2022 and 2023, a back-to-back distinction that few players at that level ever manage.
But none of those medals makes for a better story than what happened during his first weeks at the CFA. Bobb, fifteen at the time and barely settled into his new surroundings, bumped into Pep Guardiola during a tour of the building. The manager looked at the teenager’s thick, dark hair, the kind that sits properly without much effort, and delivered a line nobody present was likely to forget.
“He said I had lovely hair, and he would like some of it.” The quip landed perfectly, and it said something rather honest about a man whose own hairline had retreated long before his coaching career began to define an era. Guardiola, famously bald since his late twenties, clocked Bobb’s full head of hair and could not resist; whether the comment reflected genuine longing or just a sharp manager reading a nervous teenager and choosing warmth over formality is hard to say either way.
Pep Guardiola has been famously bald for well over a decade now, and Bobb carried a full, thick head of hair that would turn heads in any dressing room. Guardiola himself has joked publicly about his baldness on several occasions, so the contrast is genuinely amusing. Bobb’s hair stays intact effortlessly even after ninety minutes of high-intensity football.
Oscar Bobb on first meeting Pep Guardiola after bumping into him on a tour of the CFA in 2019: “He said I had lovely hair, and he would like some of it.” pic.twitter.com/uBRJPvhGKl
— City Report (@cityreport_) March 9, 2026
Furthermore, Guardiola was once a thick-haired midfielder in his playing days at Barcelona, which makes the comparison even more pointed. The irony, of course, is that the manager who demands total control over everything on the pitch has absolutely no control over what happens on top of his own head.
The lightness of that moment sits in interesting contrast to what followed. Bobb’s impact during City’s pre-season tour to Asia in summer 2023 was significant enough to earn him immediate promotion into Guardiola’s first-team squad for 2023/24. He delivered arguably the season’s most dramatic moment, latching onto Kevin De Bruyne‘s pass to score a last-minute winner at Newcastle and collected a Premier League winner’s medal at the end of it.
Injury disrupted much of 2024/25, but he returned for the Club World Cup and started the 2025/26 campaign, pushing hard for regular minutes. Bobb made 47 senior appearances for City across his time with the club, scoring three goals, before joining Fulham in January 2026 for £27 million on a five-and-a-half-year deal. Not a bad return for a kid whose manager once just wanted his hair.
