Pep Guardiola has said he has no alternative other than “just to handle it” as his ailing Manchester City squad bears the brunt of a heavy schedule he compared to the NBA.
City’s first defeat of the Premier League season, at Bournemouth on Saturday, followed exiting the Carabao Cup at Tottenham in midweek. Guardiola put his team’s slump down to the “reality we are living now”: their season is scheduled to run until Fifa’s inaugural, and controversial, Club World Cup, planned for June and July 2025 in the US, with games continuing to come thick and fast until then. On Tuesday City face Sporting, with the incoming Manchester United manager, Rúben Amorim, at the helm, in the Champions League.
Guardiola put out a team at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday that contained a number of unfit players rushed back into action, and speaking after the 2-1 defeat against Andoni Iraola’s more energetic and impressive side, the City manager said: “In the past, the previous seasons, we played a lot of games, maybe when we go to the World [Club] Cup, arriving at the last stages of the competition, we’re going to play more than 70 games. And 70 games is like the NBA, but the NBA has four-month holidays and we have three weeks, because it’s not this season, it comes from the previous season, the previous season, the previous season. When that happens, you have injuries for a long time.”
Guardiola praised those players putting themselves in the firing line, picking out Manuel Akanji and Nathan Aké for special praise: “There are players that are not in the best way and they make an incredible effort to be here. So Manu and Nathan were not in really good condition, so until the last moment I didn’t know Nathan could play and he says: ‘No, I want to try, I want to try’.”
Given a torrid time by the Bournemouth goalscorer Antoine Semenyo, City’s captain, Kyle Walker, was eventually shunted to centre-back. Guardiola was publicly sympathetic with the England international. “Since arriving for this season after the Euros, he has trained maybe five, four, five training sessions with us,” he said, “so he can play without any training because he’s in a condition, you know, physicality, that is incredible. He played 90 minutes against many, many fast players, it’s not easy.”
Walker said: “I felt as good as possible … sometimes the captain needs to step up when I could have maybe had a little bit longer out, but that’s no excuse. I was there for the lads and I think everyone out there … full credit to people’s pain, knocks, kicks, bruises, pulls some of them. That just shows the determination, the passion, what they want to do for the badge, for the club.”
Kevin De Bruyne, out since September with a troubling thigh injury, was an unused substitute but another to answer Guardiola’s call to the walking wounded. “Kevin yesterday [Friday] started to feel better, but it’s been one month and a half, and the game was so demanding,” said the Catalan. “I tried to take care of him … we need him and he will be back in the right moment.”
