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Guardiola gives hope to Hart, Toure for future
MANCHESTER: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said the door was not closed for club stalwarts like Joe Hart and Yaya Toure despite dropping them for his first
MANCHESTER: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said the door was not closed for club stalwarts like Joe Hart and Yaya Toure despite dropping them for his first Premier League game.
Guardiola picked Willy Caballero in goal for Saturday’s narrow 2-1 win over Sunderland instead of Hart, whose future at the club is in doubt, while Toure did not even make the matchday squad.
France internationals Eliaquim Mangala and Samir Nasri, meanwhile, were omitted from the squad for City’s Champions League play-off match at Steaua Bucharest on Tuesday, the latter over concerns about his weight.
But Guardiola said: “I don’t have any complaints about these names. Yaya trained really, really good. Sami arrived a little bit... but the last one week, two weeks, he’s training amazing, so I’m really impressed about the quality of Sami.
“Mangala, you know better than me how professional he is. But at the end I have a squad and I decide what I see. I have to create a team spirit. It’s not about tactics.
“I decide for this line-up today. That doesn’t mean in the future they are not going to play. In Barcelona, in (Bayern) Munich, it was difficult to repeat a line-up.
POCHETTINO EXPECTS MORE FROM SPURS
LIVERPOOL: Tottenham Hotspur boss Mauricio Pochettino believes his players might take a little longer to completely recover from their international exertions after they salvaged a 1-1 draw at Everton on Saturday.
“We started the game slowly with a lack of energy and I am very disappointed with that,” Pochettino said.
“We conceded the goal very early in the game and it was a big thing for us to manage that and difficult to recover the game.
“We need to analyse what happened but in the end it is the first game of the season and there are a lot of things to do.”
‘SCHWEINSTEIGER HAS NO FUTURE IN ENGLAND’
MUNICH: German veteran midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger has no future in English football after being dropped by Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho, according to former Germany international Dietmar Hamann.
“From a sporting point of view, one can understand Schweinsteiger being dropped. But questions can be asked about the way all this has gone down,” Hamann was quoted as saying by German newspaper Bild on Saturday.
“I would be really surprised if he still had a future in England.”
JUVENTUS WANT TO SIGN BOCA’S BENTANCUR
TURIN: Juventus director Giuseppe Marotta has revealed that the Italian football champions are interested in Boca Juniors mid-filder Rodrigo Bentancur.
“Yes, we are interested in Bentancur as well,” Marotta was quoted as saying.
The 19-year-old came through the ranks of the Boca youth academy and made his debut in April 2015. He has since developed into an important figure.
