00:00I'm at Manchester City's media centre where this afternoon Pep Guardiola held his pre-match
00:04press conference ahead of the game against Tottenham Hotspur in the Carabao Cup.
00:09Unsurprisingly, the big talking point was of course, Rodri, who last night became the
00:12first Manchester City player ever to win the Ballon d'Or. A huge achievement for the player
00:17and Guardiola was full of praise for him. Absolutely delighted for Rodri to claim that
00:21award but also delighted for Manchester City that they have a player who has won the highest
00:25individual accolade that you can have in world football. It says a lot about the club, it
00:29also says a lot, as he said, about, in general, the direction of Spanish football over the
00:33last 15-20 years and how many good players that they have managed to produce that country.
00:38Guardiola has managed quite a few of them over his time as a manager, none of whom have
00:42previously won the Ballon d'Or. Rodri, the first Spanish player in 64 years to claim
00:46that award. So Guardiola, absolutely delighted, absolutely delighted as well to see a holy
00:50midfielder win the award. He said he wasn't surprised to see Rodri win that prize.
00:55There was of course, a little bit of fallout from the award ceremony with Real Madrid not
00:58showing up and Guardiola was asked about that and said, listen, Real Madrid are entitled
01:02to do whatever they want. He said it's up to them if they want to congratulate him,
01:05if they don't, if they want to show up or not. But there was a little bit of a thinly
01:09veiled dig, I thought, in the fact that he referenced that last year Erling Haaland,
01:13who in the eyes of many probably should have won, but he said, you know, basically we showed
01:17up last year. Erling congratulated Lionel Messi, of course, another player. Pep Guardiola
01:21knows very well, implying that Real Madrid didn't carry themselves in the same sort of
01:25manner. So I thought it was a little bit of a dig at his, of course, a club he's got
01:29a longstanding rivalry with. And then of course, the other big talking point in football over
01:33the last 24 hours has been the dismissal of Eric Ten Hag across the road at Manchester
01:37United. Guardiola said that Ten Hag always carried himself with dignity, did a good job
01:42at United, said that he will come back stronger, but did admit that ultimately as a manager,
01:48you always are judged on your results. I think that was a little bit of an implication that
01:51Guardiola himself even acknowledges that the results across the road at Old Trafford just
01:55simply haven't been good enough. He said he'll miss the Dutchman, who of course he
01:58knows well from his time at Bayern Munich. But yeah, he'll be preparing for what is a
02:02fourth permanent Manchester United manager of his reign in this city when they meet in
02:08a couple of weeks' time at the Etihad.
Comments