Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has fired back at former Manchester United stars Dimitar Berbatov and Patrice Evra.
Both have been critical of City in the wake of their Champions League exit at the hands of Real Madrid, a game the Premier League champions threw away despite leading in the final minute.
Evra claimed Guardiola “doesn’t want leaders” in his team while Bebratov labeled City as acting like a “small club” during the dying embers of their dramatic loss inside the Santiago Bernabeu.
The fact the former Barcelona manager has not been able to conquer Europe with both City and Bayern Munich has often been used as a stick to beat him, even despite the dominance Guardiola has overseen on the domestic front.
Speaking ahead of Sunday’s trip to West Ham, Guardiola roared back.
“The answer is so easy, it’s the same character and personality that we lost in Madrid in the last few minutes, the same ones,” said Guardiola.
‘Like the specialist former players like Berbatov, Seedorf and Patrice Evra, these type of people that they were there.
‘When I play against them I didn’t see this kind of personality when we [Barcelona] destroyed them in the Champions League final against United. It’s the same character and personality.
“You cannot have personality because we concede two goals in one minute [but] when 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. Personality is what we have done in the last five years, every three days. Maybe Liverpool win all four titles, maybe they win just one, but you say they don’t have personality, character, they didn’t do an incredible season? Even when they lost the Premier League by one or two points against us, they had a bad season? They don’t have character? Of course they do.
“Sometimes football happens. You cannot control it, emotion, many things. When we are constantly arriving in latter stages, semi-finals, finals last 4-5 years. This is incredible, because we arrive until the end, a lot of games, go through, this is the most important.”
