All posts tagged: pep guardiola

PSG crowned UEFA Champions League winners; Arsenal crumble in penalty shootout

PSG crowned UEFA Champions League winners; Arsenal crumble in penalty shootout

Paris Saint-Germain refuses to let go of Europe. In a final of brutal margins and collapsing legs, the defending champions outlasted Arsenal 4-3 on penalties to retain the Champions League and confirmed their place at the summit of the game. Twice winners in a row, PSG held their nerve as Arsenal’s unbeaten European run finally cracked under pressure. Eberechi Eze’s miss opened the door, and Gabriel blazed the decisive kick high into the Budapest night, sending it into the stands as silence swallowed the Arsenal end. As PSG players sprinted onto the pitch in celebration, Gabriel dropped to his knees in tears, surrounded by heartbreak, while navy blue shirts swarmed the turf in scenes of pure triumph. For much of the evening, which ended 1-1 after extra time, Mikel Arteta’s side looked destined to complete the greatest achievement in the club’s history. Kai Havertz’s early strike gave Arsenal a precious advantage and appeared to put them on course for Champions League glory. Yet after spending much of the match defending their lead, the Gunners were …

Liverpool sack Arne Slot a year after winning championship

Liverpool sack Arne Slot a year after winning championship

3 min readUpdated: May 30, 2026 08:29 PM IST Liverpool has sacked manager Arne Slot on Saturday amid a poor season for the club. Slot replaced Jurgen Klopp in the 2024/2025 season and won the Premier League trophy; however, Liverpool finished fifth in the recently concluded campaign. “We have collectively come to the conclusion that change is necessary in order for the club to keep moving forward,” the ownership said in a statement. “Again, it must be stressed that this is not a decision which has been reached lightly, anything but.” Slot replaced club icon Jurgen Klopp in the summer of 2024 and led Liverpool to a record-tying 20th English league title. Liverpool spent an unprecedented $570 million to strengthen the squad for his second season but most of the expensive signings, including Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong and injury-hit striker Alexander Isak, underwhelmed. Slot, 47, appears to have paid the price for failing to emulate a debut campaign that exceeded expectations. Filling the boots of a club icon was always going to be an arduous …

A bit of Pep Guardiola in every English football game, from Premiership to Sunday leagues

A bit of Pep Guardiola in every English football game, from Premiership to Sunday leagues

Ten years is too short to be called an era, but Pep Guardiola’s decade with English football is an era unto its own. Ten years of stacking trophies, of varied sizes, shapes and values; ten years of building an identity and heritage for a club that had languished in the shadows of the more historic institution in the neighbourhood, and ten years of refashioning the ideals and values, methods and style of the English game. He would be immortalised as the greatest Manchester City manager, as one of the greatest of the league, but his biggest legacy is that he changed the footballing mentality of a stubborn nation that claims to have discovered the game. He found the league in English and left it Guardiola-esque. Precisely for this reason, his time in England can’t be fully quantified. To call him a supreme tactician would be to limit his aura to the numerous innovations and inventions he produced with various iterations of City; to belittle the supreme man-manager he was, in how he coaxed his men …

Antoine Semenyo joins the band of back-heel bamboozlers | Football News

Antoine Semenyo joins the band of back-heel bamboozlers | Football News

6 min readUpdated: May 18, 2026 08:45 AM IST All Erling Haaland could see was a wave of dark blue shirts. In front of him on the right, just inside the box, bristling like a matador trying to tame the bull was the fizzy-crowned Marc Cucurella. Haaland paused and surveyed the goalmouth. Reece James and Moises Caicedo penned Bernardo Silva at the centre. Wesley Fofana and Malo Gusto screened Nico O’Reilly rushing down the flanks. Chelsea’s backline had blocked potential paths and receptors. Jorrel Hato was ambling in for reinforcement. Then there was Antoine Semenyo. He was the nearest man to Haaland, but Levi Colwill had confiscated him like an angry customs officer. He could not slide to the left because there was little space to run through on the ball; he could not swivel to his right, or half turn, because he would run straight into a blue wall. Haaland too seemed confused (or did he foresee Semenyo’s wizardry?). His cut-back seemed misdirected, as though he had scuffed it. The shot seemed passing benignly, …

Pep Guardiola said what Mikel Arteta couldn’t: Arsenal are still in this | Football News

Pep Guardiola said what Mikel Arteta couldn’t: Arsenal are still in this | Football News

5 min readApr 21, 2026 06:46 PM IST Pep Guardiola uttered the reassuring words every Arsenal fan wanted to hear from Mikel Arterta. “Who is top of the league?” the Manchester City manager asked the press brigade after his team shaved off three points from Arsenal’s lead. “We are not!” he emphasised. “In goal difference, who is better?” ‘They are.” The victory over leaders, he stressed, “gives us just hope.” Time permitting, he could have added: Who has the meanest defence? Who has scored the most goals? Who are the most prolific converters of the dead ball? When the myopic angst dissipates, the City defeat would feel perhaps lighter. The sense of fatalism, the hyperventilating fans would realise, is a mere history-driven panic attack. It’s not hope that flutters, but belief that swirls. It’s the game they lost, but one that could stir them to greater feats. It could unburden them in the sense that their last formidable game is over. It was a game in which they found clarity and relief. The defeat to …

Guardiola turns Gaffer: Once polar opposites, Pep, like Alex Ferguson, is now totem pole of adapting systems to players | Football News

Guardiola turns Gaffer: Once polar opposites, Pep, like Alex Ferguson, is now totem pole of adapting systems to players | Football News

6 min readUpdated: Apr 20, 2026 10:24 AM IST The shadow of Alex Ferguson spread imperiously over Pep Guardiola when he arrived at the Etihad. In the unveiling ceremony in 2016, the Manchester City chairman Khaldoon al‑Mubarak, said he wished Guardiola built a dynasty like Ferguson at Manchester United. Nearly a decade later, he has built a seignorial empire in the EPL era after Ferguson. But more fascinating is how the shadows of the two managers have converged and how they resemble each other in their methods than ever before. Guardiola was the ideologue, the system’s man, the team’s structure and playing patterns stripped to detail. His football was chess in hurry, every move pre-arranged with forensic precision. He found men for the system he adhered to. Ferguson was a person’s manager; who flexed systems to the strengths of his men. He was a stickler for discipline but with emphasis on creative output, individual dazzle within a well-knit framework, football as an expression and reflection of personality rather than an ideology. But in his last …

Who is the player making Pep Guardiola’s heart go “…pff” ahead of Man City-Arsenal decider? | Football News

Who is the player making Pep Guardiola’s heart go “…pff” ahead of Man City-Arsenal decider? | Football News

There are Arsenal’s highly controlled, clockwork, almost Teutonic setpieces. And then there’s the free-flowing, mind-of-his-own Man City playmaker, Rayan Cherki. Ahead of the big Premier League showdown against Arsenal, Man City coach Pep Guardiola, was trying to contain and channel the effervescence of his young French midfielder, who tends to do his own thing but is highly effective for the team. Cherki had got Guardiola confessing that he was loosening some of his controlling strings ahead of the Chelsea game last week. “Rayan is a special, special player. He is a little bit of a free soul. I am a manager who likes control, we know this. So sometimes, on the touchline, it is so, so tough to watch. My heart… pff,” he was quoted as saying by Goal.com. City have Haaland and they have a bunch of others who he has tried to fit into his patterns. But Cherki has left Guardiola reconsidering his own beliefs. ALSO READ | Arteta vs Guardiola, master vs protege: A title decider 25 years in making “He gets …

How the O’Reilly brace in the Carabao Cup helped Pep Guardiola strike a moment of joyous defiance in a dithering season | Football News

How the O’Reilly brace in the Carabao Cup helped Pep Guardiola strike a moment of joyous defiance in a dithering season | Football News

The referee brandished a yellow card at Pep Guardiola. He was oblivious to it, because he was beside the fence, celebrating with the fans the second Nico O’Reilly headed brace. It probably did not matter to him, as he turned back from the revelries and was informed about the card. All that mattered were the goals, the trophy and the glory. Every time O’Reilly slammed into the Arsenal nets, Guardiola rejoiced with the spontaneity of a child. He bounced like the Energizer bunny, clenched his fists and swiped in furious joy. He would later say with sass and savvy, “I wanted another yellow card, that was the target.” “If I cannot celebrate against that team with the way we are playing, then when?” He is often measured in celebrations, not least in the Carabao Cup, a trophy arguably not as prized as the league bowl or the Champions League crown. But sometimes it is about the little moments in life, the backdrop and the bearings that enhance the value of something seemingly insignificant. The Carabao …

Former Ashton Villa striker predicts winner of EFL cup: ‘Arsenal win, Arsenal win…’

Former Ashton Villa striker predicts winner of EFL cup: ‘Arsenal win, Arsenal win…’

2 min readUpdated: Mar 20, 2026 03:41 PM IST Arsenal and Manchester City are at the top of the Premier League table. The sides will take on each other in the EFL Cup final. Former Ashton Villa striker Gabriel Agbonlahor has rooted for Arsenal to win the  EFL Cup competition. And also predicted that it might get a bit spicy on the touchline between Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola and Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta on the touchline. “Arsenal win, Arsenal win, Ally (McCoist), for me,” Agbonlahor said on talkSPORT (via Arsenal Insider). “I just think they know how important that game is. I just think when I look at Man City, I just think Gabriel (Magalhaes) and (William) Saliba are going to be so aggressive on (Erling) Haaland, the form that he’s been in. “And I think it’s going to get spicy on the touchline. I know they’re friends, (Mikel) Arteta and Guardiola, but I think everything’s on the line in this game.” Title race Arsenal sit top on 70 points, followed by Manchester City …

Is Real Madrid defeat the beginning of end for Pep Guardiola at Manchester City | Football News

Is Real Madrid defeat the beginning of end for Pep Guardiola at Manchester City | Football News

5 min readMar 18, 2026 11:14 AM IST Time would freeze the image. The great Catalan general stooped on his knees in the corner of his technical area in Etihad with the eyes of a fallen man. His troops are tired and scattered, his fans scarred. In the centre of the pitch Real Madrid are celebrating. It’s a cruel irony that Guardiola’s fall has come at the hands of once his bitterest rivals; the lone respite was the stage was Etihad and not Bernabeu. He has somewhere to hide. Yet, he didn’t hide. He forced a smile, one that’s more enigmatic than manufactured. an indecipherable smile. It could be one of pain or pang, of rage or resignation, of hurt or humiliation. He had suffered defeats. Some he has taken with angst, some with disbelief. “I don’t like to lose, but you can’t always win. I don’t have such delusions,” he had said after the Inter Milan ambush of Barcelona. Last year, he said: “I’m delighted to have failed. I love failures. In this society …