Pep Guardiola’s presence at Edgeley Park on Tuesday \u2014 watching Stockport County take on Port Vale in League One \u2014 raised more than a few eyebrows. His decision to sit in the stands coincided with the Champions League semifinal first leg at Parc des Princes between Paris Saint Germain and Bayern Munich, a 5\u20134 contest that left PSG with a slight advantage.<\/p>\n
Guardiola addressed his choice on Friday with a line that undercut the spectacle for many viewers. \u201cThe day before, I saw the calendar and the game PSG versus Bayern Munich, and I said \u2018Bleh! What a disaster game,\u2019\u201d Guardiola told reporters with a sarcastic smirk. \u201cManagers are not good, [PSG\u2019s] Luis [Enrique] and [Bayern\u2019s] Vincent [Kompany]. Really, really s— players.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments carried extra weight because of Guardiola\u2019s personal connections to both figures he mentioned. Guardiola and Enrique share a deep, long-standing friendship, having played together for Barcelona from 1996\u20132001. Kompany is also part of Guardiola\u2019s professional history; he served as a player and captain under Guardiola at City between 2016 and 2019, a period that produced six trophies. Kompany has been outspoken about his respect and admiration for Guardiola\u2019s coaching style, even naming him as \u201cthe best coach I ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n
City\u2019s schedule helps explain Guardiola\u2019s availability. Manchester City had the week off after being eliminated from the Champions League last month and are not back in Premier League action until Monday, when they face Everton at Hill Dickinson Stadium. That gap allowed Guardiola to attend a lower-league fixture in person, even as the continent watched a high-scoring European tie unfold.<\/p>\n
Whether viewed as an amusing lark or a pointed dismissal of a headline fixture, Guardiola\u2019s explanation and the context around his outing ensured the episode dominated conversation through the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola watched Stockport v Port Vale instead of PSG v Bayern calling the clash ‘a disaster game.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,1627],"tags":[1505,1162],"class_list":["post-13566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-stockport-county","tag-accountability","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}