Pep Guardiola gets a farewell from his Barcelona players in May 2012. Getty Images

Pep Guardiola hasn't managed a soccer game in more than seven months. Since last summer, the coach credited with Barcelona's era of beautiful dominance has preferred to bask in the anonymity of New York, far from the stress of La Liga and the European soccer rumor mill. Yet, three thousand miles away, his stock continues to skyrocket.

Part of that is down to his talent, but also the accidentally brilliant timing of his sabbatical. Due to an unprecedented set of circumstances—some coincidental, some evolutionary, and some just misguided—2013 is set to be the year that high-profile managerial moves eclipse anything the player transfer market can produce.

At least three of the top clubs in the world (Manchester City, Chelsea and Real Madrid) are widely expected to be hunting for new managers and Manchester United could be nosing around for the right candidate to replace the 71-year-old Alex Ferguson should he retire this summer. At the same time, some of the world's most highly regarded managers could also be on the market.

Along with Real Madrid's current manager Jose Mourinho, above, Guardiola may be seeking a new job this year. Getty Images

On Monday, while attending FIFA's Ballon d'Or gala for international player of the year, Guardiola teased his potential suitors even further, saying that he expected to be coaching next year. He just didn't know where yet.

What is certain is that A-list coaches like Guardiola and Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho, who is expected to leave the club this summer, according to several reports in Spain, are going to be expensive. Data on manager salaries is sketchy and rarely publicized, so it's difficult to say whether managers' salaries are exploding in the same way player salaries did a decade ago. But Pluri, a consultancy based in Brazil, estimated recently that Mourinho is the highest-paid manager in the world, earning some $20 million a year. If that figure is correct, it would put him on par with many of the richest players in Europe.

More accurately, Deloitte's breakdown of Chelsea's 2011 financial report reveals just how much elite clubs are prepared to invest in their management. That year, the club's staff costs included roughly $24 million in termination payments made to managers and coaching staff, plus an additional $21 million "in relation to changes in the first team management structure," according to Deloitte.

"But there are not that many clubs in the position of a Chelsea or a Manchester City where money is no object," said Dan Jones, head of the Sports Business Group at Deloitte.

Even so, more owners are getting used to the idea of spending money on managers as freely as they do on players. The bigger question: Does it matter?

Research suggests that most teams would be better off spending their money on players.

Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan and a co-author of "Soccernomics," has examined the difficult question of how to assess the impact of soccer managers. He argues that a team's payroll can be an accurate predictor of performance so that, essentially, any performance above or below the expected result can be attributed to the manager.

Szymanski has found that most managers "don't offer anything in addition to the value of the team," he said in a telephone interview last week. Just look at Chelsea: The most successful period in the big-spending club's history has been an eight-year spell overseen by nine different managers. (Queen's Park Rangers manager Harry Redknapp joked last week that, with the players in Chelsea's squad, only "a real dope" could fail there.)

"But obviously," Szymanski added, "there is a minority. And people like Ferguson and [Arsenal manager Arsene] Wenger are in that minority of managers who did add something above and beyond. But there are very few managers who have done it consistently with different teams."

Guardiola isn't one of them yet. When Barcelona appointed him in 2008 at age 37, the extent of his managerial résumé was one season in charge of the Barcelona B team, a reserve side used as a feeder to the main squad. And whereas Mourinho has won titles in Portugal, England, Italy and Spain, Guardiola's array of 14 major trophies all came with Barcelona.

"I can't distinguish Guardiola from Barcelona, but I certainly can distinguish Mourinho from the clubs he's managed," Szymanski said. "We've got far more data on which to evaluate Mourinho. Guardiola, he's just the risky bet, isn't he? He might be a good bet. But whatever he is, he's definitely going to be riskier than Mourinho as an alternative."

Some would even argue that Guardiola was less an innovator than a custodian in charge of making sure his club didn't waste its ample talent, though that might be taking it too far. (He couldn't be reached for comment to answer the question.) Certainly, Guardiola put his mark on the club. According to Graham Hunter's 2012 book, "Barça: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World," he increased the focus on fitness, used harsher discipline and jettisoned some of the locker room's more divisive figures.

"Little details matter a lot now and psychologically, we are undergoing a Master's degree with Pep," Barcelona midfielder Xavi said at the time, according to Hunter. "Everything is controlled and well-prepared. We spend a lot of time on strategy, tactics and how the opponent is going to play against us."

But it's unclear whether those methods are what set him apart. The players who came to define his era—the trinity of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi—were already at the club when he took over.

Meanwhile, his record in the transfer market, a good indicator of a manager's acumen, was mixed. The club spent nearly $500 million on players throughout his tenure, but for every Dani Alves, the brilliant Brazilian fullback, there were several flops like Keirrison, the $20 million Brazilian forward who never played a game for Barcelona. For every David Villa, there was a disappointment like Dmytro Chygrynsky.

Then there is the central question of whether Barcelona's unique brand of quick passing and intricate movement would translate elsewhere. Would it work at a club that didn't have Messi, Xavi, and Iniesta to execute it?

Roma had hoped to import the philosophy when it hired Luis Enrique who, like Guardiola, had played for Barcelona and only ever managed Barcelona B. The experiment failed miserably and Enrique walked away after Roma finished seventh.

Guardiola seemed to understand this risk, too, early in his tenure, and long before he had begun considering options beyond Camp Nou.

"The key to all this is that we have fantastic footballers," Guardiola said, according to Hunter. "No coach, least of all me, works miracles."

Write to Joshua Robinson at