A number of people have been heavily critical of the manner in which Manchester City exited the Champions League.
The Citizens were on the verge of booking a place in the final at the Bernabeu, but they saw their 2-0 advantage on aggregate vanish in a flash during two bonkers minutes.
A brace from Rodrygo Goes in stoppage-time levelled things up and Karim Benzema then fired home the winner for Real Madrid from the penalty spot in extra-time.
The Frenchman said in part of his rant: “Manchester City needs leaders, but Guardiola doesn’t want leaders. He doesn’t want personality. He’s the leader. That’s why when they’re in trouble they don’t want to.
“They don’t have anyone on the pitch to help them. He chooses his teams like that; he can’t train people with personality. He did it at Barcelona, but he builds his team to control everyone.”
Evra’s former teammate Dimitar Berbatov was also critical of City’s nightmare in Madrid, the Bulgarian likening it to Bayern Munich’s failure in the 1999 final against United.
Well, it seems Guardiola has finally had enough of the condemnation of his team.
In his latest press conference ahead of City’s Premier League match versus West Ham, the Spaniard fired back with a quite epic reponse.
Video: Guardiola responds to his critics
🗣 “I didn’t see when I played against them this kind of personality when we destroyed them.” 😅
Pep Guardiola responds to the comments from Dimitar Berbatov and Patrice Evra on him being unable to manage “big characters” pic.twitter.com/5JD8tixgH7
— Football Daily (@footballdaily) May 13, 2022
He said: “The character is the same that we lost in Madrid in the last few minutes. A specialist former players like Berbatov and Seedorf, Patrice they weren’t there. When I play against them I didn’t see this kind of personality when we [Barcelona] destroyed them in the Champions League final versus United. It’s the same character and personality.
“We don’t have personality because we concede two goals in two minutes but we had two chances to score and we don’t have personality. After the last four games we score 23 goals we have incredible personality. I’m sorry but I completely disagree about this.”
Fair play, Pep.
You can certainly see where he’s coming from as well.
City’s collapse was shocking, no one can deny that, but to say a team on the verge of securing a fourth Premier League title in five years ‘lacks character and personality’ is just plain wrong.
Of course, Guardiola will be in the perfect position to end his European hoodoo next season after the signing of Erling Braut Haaland…
