Pep Guardiola has said he has no alternative other than to “just handle it” as his ailing Manchester City squad bears the brunt of a heavy schedule he compared to the NBA. City’s first defeat of the Premier League season, at Bournemouth on Saturday, followed their exit from the Carabao Cup at Tottenham in midweek.
Guardiola put his team’s slump down to the “reality we are living now”: their season is scheduled to run until Fifa’s inaugural Club World Cup, planned for June and July 2025 in the US, with games continuing to come thick and fast. On Tuesday City face Sporting in the Champions League, with incoming Manchester United manager Rúben Amorim at the helm.
Speaking after the 2-1 defeat, Guardiola said: “In the past, the previous seasons, we played a lot of games, maybe when we go to the World Cup, arriving at the last stages of the competition, we’re going to play more than 70 games. And 70 games is like the NBA, but the NBA has four-month holidays and we have three weeks.”
Guardiola praised those players putting themselves in the firing line, picking out Manuel Akanji and Nathan Aké for special praise. “There are players that are not in the best way and they make an incredible effort to be here,” he said. City captain Kyle Walker, given a torrid time by Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo, was shunted to centre-back. Guardiola said Walker had trained only four or five sessions since the Euros.
Walker said: “I felt as good as possible … sometimes the captain needs to step up when I could have maybe had a little bit longer out, but that’s no excuse.” Kevin De Bruyne, out since September with a thigh injury, was an unused substitute. Guardiola said: “Kevin yesterday started to feel better, but it’s been one month and a half, and the game was so demanding.”
