Paris Saint-Germain and Luis Enrique were always among the likeliest voices to defend Manchester City at this moment. That should not come as a surprise. Enrique shares a long-standing friendship with Pep Guardiola, a relationship that began when both were on Spain\u2019s Olympic roster on home soil in 1992. They later moved through the senior national team together, then became club colleagues in 1996 after Enrique switched from Real Madrid to Barcelona in the early days of the Bosman ruling.<\/p>\n
Their paths continued to overlap in Barcelona, where Enrique coached Barcelona B while Guardiola led the first team, before Enrique eventually took charge of the senior side in 2014. So when he was asked about the Premier League\u2019s guilty verdict hanging over Manchester City ahead of Wednesday\u2019s Champions League meeting, his response was measured and sympathetic.<\/p>\n
Guardiola is expected to attend for the first time since stepping down as manager in May, and Enrique made clear that he hopes the process reaches a fair conclusion. \u201cWe just have to wait and see what the final decision will be,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope everything works out well for Manchester City because I think what they have done on the pitch has been incredible over the last few years and they certainly deserved to win on the pitch all the trophies they have won. Now we have to wait to see what the authorities decide.\u201d<\/p>\n
He expanded on that view when discussing the issue further. \u201cThe first thing that you hear, it is a surprise, but we need to respect the process and wait for the final decision,\u201d Enrique admitted. \u201cThe authorities are responsible for making these decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, speaking only about football, they deserved those trophies. I love their football. Beyond that, we have to wait for the decision. The trophies you win on the pitch remain on the pitch. They deserved to win that and I hope they can avoid the sanction. But we have to wait.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manchester City have appealed the guilty verdict reached by an independent panel after a multi-year Premier League investigation into the 2009 to 2018 period. Further appeals could follow if the club are still found guilty when the initial appeal verdict is due in late January.<\/p>\n
For now, City must continue as normal while the disciplinary process runs its course, still uncertain over what comes next or how any sanction might eventually be applied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Enrique\u2019s support for City is rooted in friendship, football history, and a process still unresolved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21763,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,1031],"tags":[1047,59],"class_list":["post-21764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-paris-saint-germain","tag-champions-league","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21764","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=21764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}