Semenyo joined City from Bournemouth for £65m in the January transfer window, with Guardiola fighting off competition from rivals Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea for his signature.
The player says interest first came in early December with “a lot of talks” taking place, before he made the decision the following month that he wanted to join City.
“I owe them everything to be honest,” Semenyo said of former club Bournemouth. “They helped my Premier League career flourish and obviously the management, the staff behind the scenes, they were all amazing, they made everything so smooth.”
Semenyo scored a total of 21 goals for club and country last season, netting the winning goal in the FA Cup final win over Chelsea which he called a “dream come true”, as well as lifting the Carabao Cup.
Speaking at Ahmad Tea’s Preparation is Everything event in Hong Kong, he added: “I think for me, I just wanted the next step to be the big one and Manchester City was the option. Pep spoke to me beforehand and he said, ‘look, when you come, I am going to make you a better player’.
“You want to get better, you want to improve every season and he definitely helped me with that in the first five months, but obviously sad for him to leave.”