Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has given a passionate response to Arsenal’s set-piece tactics ahead of Sunday’s Carabao Cup final at Wembley.
City are vying for their first piece of silverware in two seasons when they take on Mikel Arteta and co in London this weekend, having suffered a third successive elimination in the UEFA Champions League by Real Madrid earlier this week.
The Blues have won just one of their last five games in all competitions and after a poor run of results in March, there are serious doubts over City’s silverware prospects between now and the end of their first full season under director of football Hugo Viana.
However, City are still alive in the Premier League title race – albeit barely, being nine points adrift of leaders Arsenal, who have played an additional game – and will take on Liverpool in the FA Cup quarter-final in early April, after the upcoming international break.
Guardiola brushes down talk of Arsenal ‘dark arts’
In a passionate pre-match press conference moment, Guardiola brushed off a question on Arsenal’s set-piece tactic of clustering players around the opposition goalkeeper to increase their goalscoring threat.
The Manchester City manager was not in the mood to have a go at one of his rivals as he underlined that there are far greater issues to worry about globally than Arsenal’s ‘dark arts’.
“Look what happens around the world, we are becoming in an incredible chaos and nobody moves one finger,” he said on Friday afternoon.
“Everything is behind the scenes. The world is going to collapse and still we are here talking about either dark arts of one team or another team. There are more important things than that.”
What is the wider context of Guardiola’s comments?
Guardiola has gained widespread plaudits for using his platform to speak out against the atrocities in war-torn areas of the world – having cited the middle East, Sudan, Ukraine and the United States as examples.
The Manchester City manager has repeatedly expressed his grief at innocent lives being taken due to conflict between nations and ethnicities in what has become a very rare intersection between football and geopolitics.
There are doubts over the 55-year-old’s future at the Etihad Stadium but regardless of whether he stays in the dugout in east Manchester next term, the Catalan has won hearts in the football space for taking a strong stance on humanitarian issues that outweigh football in importance.
Guardiola is expected to make a firm decision on his Manchester City future after this weekend’s Carabao Cup final against Arsenal, with former Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca touted as the likeliest replacement in the event of a summer exit.