Pep Guardiola says no hard feelings following Mauricio Pochettino’s disregard

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Manchester City’s coach, Pep Guardiola, said he had no problem with Chelsea’s coach, Mauricio Pochettino, who refused to shake his hand after their recent match.

Pep Guardiola made this known in the post-match press conference that followed the match, when he was asked how he felt about the bad treatment.

‘No problem. It’s not a problem,’ Guardiola answered. ‘I don’t want to say one word. It’s completely fine. The emotions happen to me sometimes. It’s fine.’

Two things must have angered Chelsea’s coach, Mauricio Pochettino, in the course of the match: the referee’s officiating and the late goal, which made the final score 4-4. Pochettino had stormed off into the pitch to scold the referee at the end of the match and seemed to have added the other officials to the group of those who caused the unsavoury draw.

‘It’s not normal 4-4,’ Manchester City’s tactician went on to say. ‘Usually we control more, but I can’t remember a game when we come here and had the chances that we had. Even the games we won 0-1 and even last year’s game was much worse than we played today by a million times.

‘Do you know what Chelsea have done [to build this team]? In the past it was City, City, City who have done that. Look at what Chelsea have done to create that fantastic team? So it’s normal. It was a fair result. It is what it is. Did you have fun?’

Clearly, Pep Guardiola liked the final result more than infuriated Pochettino. Just a little time later, Pochettino was found telling journalists he was going to apologise to both Pep Guardiola and Anthony Taylor, the referee. This was after he had cooled off. He also explained the reason for his unsightly action.

Mauricio Pochettino

‘I need to apologise to Anthony, the referees, and the fourth official,’ Pochettino promised. ‘ In this moment, I feel that maybe Raheem can go through and go to score the fifth and in this moment when the game finishes I turn and say: “What the ….?’ You know, what’s going on?” I said: “Why stop in this moment, the action.”

‘Then I turned and said “I deserve, I deserve to be booked.” Because I crossed the limit, so I want to apologise because it’s not a good image for me and for football, this type of behaviour. I also want to apologise to Pep also because I did not see him in this moment.’

Given the level of manpower on both sides of the board during the contest, it would not be out of order to say that the scores were forgivable.