Ilkay Gundogan missing a penalty
The footage has gone viral
Manchester City are in the midst of a dreadful run of form – and a video of their shocking penalty attempts has not inspired much confidence they are about to turn things around.
City take on Juventus in Turin in the Champions League on Wednesday night on the back of just one win from their last nine matches in all competitions. Pep Guardiola’s side have been struggling massively since the end of October and have fallen eight points behind Premier League leaders Liverpool, who also have a game in-hand.
They have been beaten by Tottenham twice, Bournemouth, Sporting Lisbon, Brighton and Liverpool, while Feyenoord and Crystal Palace have held them to draws in that period. City face a stubborn Juventus side which has been beaten just once in all competitions this season on Wednesday and their training session on Tuesday didn’t offer their fans much hope.
The club put on a live stream for their supporters to watch the players train on Tuesday afternoon, with 19,000 taking up the offer on YouTube. Unfortunately for City, many many more people saw a clip of four of their star players apparently missing an open goal while practising taking penalties.
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Phil Foden, Jack Grealish, Ilkay Gundogan and Erling Haaland all stepped up in quick succession to strike the ball from 12 yards – and all of them missed the target. Foden blazed his effort way over the bar, Gundogan side-footed his effort wide of the post, Grealish skied his while leaning back and Haaland curled his past the top corner.
“How have they all just missed a penalty each without a goalkeeper in the net?” one commenter on YouTube wrote. Many others pointed out that it seemed as though the players were aiming for the crossbar, not the empty net, but that explanation didn’t satisfy some.
“Even for a cross bar challenge, this is embarrassing,” one fan wrote. “Penalty practice or crossbar challenge, it’s some of the worst attempts I’ve ever seen at either,” another added.
Jack Grealish skied his penalty (
Image:
YouTube/ Man City)
Guardiola will be hoping that his top marksmen are in better form on Wednesday evening because City need a win. They currently sit 17th in the Champions League table with eight points from their opening five fixtures, two points outside the automatic qualification places.
The City manager is happy to have been given an extra day to prepare for the match. “My people have started to study [Juventus] and fortunately we don’t play on Tuesday, we play on Wednesday so we have one more day to recover these players because we don’t have players to come back,” he said.
“We go to Turin to play the most important team in Italy alongside Milan, Inter but in terms of Serie A the team who won the most. It’s a nice stadium and we’ll try to get a good result. The doctors and physios are working incredible this season like never before I have ever seen but the reality is we have few players to rotate in this period.”
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