Pep Guardiola Liverpool Man City
© IMAGO - Pep Guardiola Liverpool Man City
As Liverpool were 2-0 up on Manchester City on Sunday, it seemed like the game was going to be another chapter in this unexpected slump in City’s season.
But, as the game ticked towards 90 minutes, it started to become clear that this wasn’t just another head-in-hands moment for Pep Guardiola’s team.
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This was the moment.
Since the very second that backup goalkeeper Stefan Ortega brought down Luis Diaz and Mo Salah calmly dispatched the penalty to make it 2-0, Manchester City have been on a rollercoaster of headloss the like of which hasn’t been seen in English football for years.
It started with Guardiola holding up six fingers to the Anfield faithful as they chanted ‘Sacked in the morning!’ at him. It was a mortifying response from a man clearly unable to deal with this level of failure for the first time in his career.
But that was almost understandable. It’s football - the crowd give him some banter, he gives it back.
But everything since then has demonstrated that the entire club has no idea how to respond to adversity.
Man City's collective head loss
It started with Guardiola himself saying, "I didn't expect it from the people from Liverpool but it's fine, it's part of the game, and I understand completely.”
And then moved on to goalkeeper Ortega getting incredibly close to a classist insult of the city itself, reacting to Guardiola’s antics by saying “Someone told me before that this area [Liverpool] is probably not the best part in the UK”.
This was followed up by vice-captain Ruben Dias getting very abrasive on Viaplay TV when asked about taking responsibility for their losses, responding “You know that you’re talking to one of the players of one of the teams in the world that has won the most in recent years? Have a think about that and be sure we know how to deal with it.”
And now it’s taken on an entirely different dimension, with Phil Foden just posting comment-less images of himself with his trophies on Instagram, despite hardly any of the discourse on City’s slump focusing on individual performances. Bold from a man who hasn't scored a league goal since May.
And it came full circle in Guardiola’s press conference yesterday, when he was asked if his gestures at Anfield showed he’d ‘lost his cool’ and he responded, “I was never cool. Do you know why I was cool? Because I won, we won. The people who won are so cool, so handsome, so nice. When you won’t win it’s completely the opposite.”
The entire saga has been emblematic of a club of weak-minded characters who have no idea how to deal with the adversity that everyone else in football goes through on an almost weekly basis.
Their captains play badly and then get insulting in the media. Their attackers have their egos bruised and start posting trophies from when their Ballon d’Or winning defensive midfielder was holding them together with a shoestring. And their manager, finally, can’t figure out the problem and starts speaking in riddles.
It would be so frustrating if they were calm about the mess they’re in. But every single one of them is responding like a spoilt child and it is glorious to see.
Long may it continue.
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