Pep Guardiola has a good record in the transfer market with Manchester City, but some players who left have gone on to criticise the manager
Aymeric Laporte this week made headlines for questioning Pep Guardiola’s transfer policy at Manchester City. It felt like the first time a player has openly gone against the manager.
There have been times where a player has respectfully offered a different opinion to Guardiola – mainly over playing time. Raheem Sterling said it was a ‘massive surprise’ that he saw a drop in minutes: “Me and the manager and the people at the club know exactly what the reasons were. I tried to play my football and overcome the situation but it couldn’t be done so I had to move on.”
Players like Joe Hart and Eliaquim Mangala have spoken about Guardiola’s professionalism while informing them that they had no future at City, and others like Leroy Sane or Joao Cancelo have had to set the record straight over rumours of a falling out that led to their exits. There are, however, times when a player – past or present – takes the bold move of calling out the best manager in the world – in a similar way to Laporte this week.
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Discussing Guardiola’s well-known stance that unhappy players can leave if they want to and there is an acceptable offer, Laporte said: “That’s what he usually says. For several players it wasn’t like that, but I’m not going to go into that type of things. I decided to leave and I was able to leave. That’s it.”
Laporte also cited his move to left-back and loss of a regular starting spot as reasons for his summer exit, saying: “I had been playing for two years in a place that was not the position that I did not want to play. When a year, two years goes by and you do not play in the ideal place for you, it is a little frustrating because you do not show the best of yourself,”
“You can make whatever efforts. I was used to playing centre-back and not so much on the wing. It’s not exactly the ideal position for me. In addition, they signed many other centre-backs during the last three years of my time at City and it was time to leave and not stay.”
Laporte also spoke of his friendship with former City youngster Brahim Diaz, who left in 2019 after falling out with Guardiola over his lack of chances from the academy. Diaz joined Real Madrid and has taken the long-way round to become a first team option there, with Guardiola saying at the time: “If he doesn’t want to stay, he has to leave.”
“I don’t want people who don’t want to stay here, to be with us and try to achieve what we want to achieve. If players want to stay, the door is always open for them.”
When Sterling joined Chelsea, he said: “Everyone wants to feel wanted, football is no different. When you play your heart out, sacrifice some of your kids’ birthdays, and then get treated in a certain way, it’s disappointing. At the time I was fuming, raging, but it’s gone, it’s in the past and I can only focus on the present.”
Then there is the case of Angelino, who said his return to City in 2019 ‘killed him’, taking aim at Guardiola after making his subsequent loan to RB Leipzig permanent.
“The confidence was everything, when you don’t have the trust of a coach it is everything,” he said. “I was judged from two pre-season games and then I didn’t get my chance for a few months.”
Later backtracking a little, he added: “On one side I really learned a lot from Pep, but I obviously didn’t play as much as I wanted to or deserved to. It is not that he killed me as a player. He made me the player that I am.
“It is just that I didn’t play. That is why I said he killed my confidence. I didn’t get much game time. But, I will always be thankful for the help he gave me.”
First published by: Manchester evening news
