LONDON, Dec. 26 (dpa/EP) –
The Manchester City coach, Pep Guardiola, confessed this Tuesday that, upon winning the recent Club World Cup, he had felt “like when we won the 'sextete' at Barcelona”, alluding to the year 2009 in which he won the Copa del Rey, LaLiga, the Champions League, the Spanish Super Cup, the European Super Cup and also the FIFA 'Mundialito'.
“This is a business in which you get credit when you win,” said Guardiola at a press conference, on the eve of his team playing against Everton FC at Goodison Park during matchday 19 of the Premier League.
“If you don't win, you are nothing, zero; and what you have done is in the past,” he commented. “No matter how much you win, others want you to fail. More than ever. I felt like when we won the 'sextete' at Barcelona,” she added.
“It is normal that they do not want us to win. In these 14 or 15 years what we have won, all the titles, is something incredible,” continued Guardiola, just a few days before the end of 2023 in which his team has won the titles of Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League, European Super Cup and the recent Club World Cup held in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia).
“People say: 'How well they play, what a genius he is…'. But they give us credit only because we won. We don't have to look beyond that,” said the 'Citizens' coach, who on December 22 December achieved that Club World Cup by defeating Fluminense 4-0 in the final.
In this sense, Guardiola highlighted that the tournament in Jeddah had served as “incredible training” and also to reinforce the “team spirit.” “When you don't win, you will have doubts about absolutely everything,” he warned.
“But that's the good thing. It's okay. Let them doubt again, we'll see what happens,” he added. “I've said it before when we played incredibly well against Crystal Palace, Liverpool and Tottenham but we didn't win,” he argued.
“It is real proof that they do not care about the way we play. If we play at the best levels, quite similar to these last eight years, and we do not win, it is 'disaster' and 'crisis',” he noted. “Of course we have bad moments, like against Aston Villa. But what is the problem?” reflected the former Barça coach.
“The others can play better, so we have to accept it and move on. The reality is that we are happy, but they are waiting for us around the corner,” concluded Guardiola, about how to deal with mistakes throughout a very demanding 2023/24 course.