The start of that article is great, I'd forgotten about that.
It really was a watershed moment. It was like watching Ben Johnson win the 100m in 4 seconds.
It really was a watershed moment. It was like watching Ben Johnson win the 100m in 4 seconds.
The strangest moment of Saturday’s FA Cup final came in the seconds after Manchester City’s sixth goal, when the camera cut from the mob of celebrating City players to Pep Guardiola, who was slumped on the bench with his head in his hands.
Pep looked less like a happy football coach watching his side make history and more like an anguished scientist whose prototype civil defence robot has just run amok at a trade show, slaughtering several bystanders. It looked as though he understood that the very scale of the victory had begun to devalue it, that City were now in the territory of negative marginal returns, that the reaction to this turkey shoot would go beyond appreciation and congratulation, towards accusation and perhaps even condemnation.
And so it proved. The Cup-winning manager’s post-match press conference is usually laudatory, but Pep’s ended with a journalist asking whether he, like his predecessor Roberto Mancini, had ever received any extra payments from City’s ownership group on top of his regular salary.
Guardiola looked about as angry as anyone has seen him since he arrived in England. “Do you know the question you’re asking me?” he hissed. “If I ever received money for another situation, right now, today? Honestly, do you think I deserve to have this type of question happen – what happened with Roberto I don’t know, the day we won the treble – if I received money from other situations? Oh my God. Are you accusing me of receiving money?”
Pep looked less like a happy football coach watching his side make history and more like an anguished scientist whose prototype civil defence robot has just run amok at a trade show, slaughtering several bystanders. It looked as though he understood that the very scale of the victory had begun to devalue it, that City were now in the territory of negative marginal returns, that the reaction to this turkey shoot would go beyond appreciation and congratulation, towards accusation and perhaps even condemnation.
And so it proved. The Cup-winning manager’s post-match press conference is usually laudatory, but Pep’s ended with a journalist asking whether he, like his predecessor Roberto Mancini, had ever received any extra payments from City’s ownership group on top of his regular salary.
Guardiola looked about as angry as anyone has seen him since he arrived in England. “Do you know the question you’re asking me?” he hissed. “If I ever received money for another situation, right now, today? Honestly, do you think I deserve to have this type of question happen – what happened with Roberto I don’t know, the day we won the treble – if I received money from other situations? Oh my God. Are you accusing me of receiving money?”
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