Manchester City have to accept another setback against Tottenham in the fight for the championship. Pep Guardiola is already writing the championship off.
Manchester City have taken the next low blow – and Pep Guardiola is flying the white flag.
The champions lost 2-0 (0-0) at Tottenham Hotspur. Steven Bergwijn (63.) and Heung-Min Son (72.) decided the wild top game in England.
League leader FC Liverpool with coach Jürgen Klopp will have been pleased to note. The Reds now sit 22 points ahead of City and Guardiola – never before has a top Premier League leader’s lead been greater.
Guardiola talks to his team for 45 minutes after the final whistle
Guardiola was more than satisfied after the defeat. The Spanish success coach knows that this failure means the end of the title race. After the final whistle, he stayed in the dressing room with his charges for 45 minutes.
Afterwards, however, he insisted that he had not criticised. He merely told the press in England: “I am proud of my players. I like the way they play football, even if it wasn’t enough today.”
When he finally showed up at the press conference after the game, the first question was, of course, “Do you accept that City has virtually no chance of winning the championship?” Guardiola nodded eagerly, but the reporter just said, “Can you say that?”
Guardiola waited for the brief laugh of the reporter, glanced around the room and answered briefly and firmly, “Yes.”
Later he said: “You’re too far away. “You can’t stop Liverpool. We’ve left far too many points in games like that.” Now it was time for his team to qualify for the Champions League, and his opposite number, José Mourinho, knew that the result was flattering from a Spurs point of view. “We’ve been lucky in some situations where they hit the post or miss big chances. When we were one more, it was a different game. City can make up for that, but we took our chances then.”