Pep Guardiola hasn’t been sleeping well. His back has been killing him. The neighbors have a loud dog that barks through the night. One of the kids keeps waking up and demanding to sleep in his parents’ bed. And that new mattress his wife insisted on getting just isn’t working out for him at all. To make matters worse, there’s this damn bird that’s been nesting underneath the gutter right outside the window, and the clicking and ticking is driving him nuts.
We’re just going to assume all of the above is true, because Pep has been cranky as all hell lately.
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In spite of his new club Manchester City making an unprecedented 8-0-0 start to the season and sweeping into first place in the Premier League, he was visibly hangry in a press conference on Monday.
When a reporter asked him if he thought City could win all four competitions it would enter this year—the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, and League Cup—he stared him dead in the eyes and responded, “What the fuck?”
Then he sighed a deep, soulful, tortured sigh and mumbled something about how City had only ever been to the Champions League semifinals once.
On Tuesday, Guardiola lost his shit on veteran midfielder Yaya Touré’s agent Dimitri Seluk, who was doing what European soccer agent tends to: advocate loudly and brashly on behalf of his client. Guardiola had left Touré, who once sulked and threatened to leave the club when it didn’t wish him a happy birthday—although the club maintains that it did—out of his Champions League squad.
“If City don’t win the Champions League,” said Seluk, “then I hope that Pep has got the balls to say that he was wrong to humiliate a great player like Yaya.” Seluk, by the way, was also the one claiming that City’s failure to send Yaya a birthday cake two years ago was “proof” they didn’t care about him, even though he was the club’s player of the year that season.
Guardiola chose not to do what most managers would and just ignore the agent’s rant. “He must apologize to his team-mates, to the club” the Spaniard declared, presumably referring to Touré. “If he doesn’t, he won’t play.”
Seluk is in no mood to apologize though, or for his client to do so on his behalf. “Guardiola wins a few games and thinks he is king,” he told Sky Sports News. “I live in Europe so I can say whatever I like and Guardiola can’t stop me. I will apologize to Guardiola if he will apologize to Manuel Pellegrini for what he did to him.”
Pellegrini was Guardiola’s predecessor as City manager. But he was lame-ducked back in January when the club announced that Pep would be taking over in the summer.
Guardiola then laid down the hammer and challenged Seluk to come back for another press conference and apologize to Manchester City, Touré’s teammates, and then the trainer, otherwise Touré will not play.
How will all this affect Toure? Surely not positively. At 33, he is already much diminished as a midfielder and unlikely to play a major part in Guardiola’s revamped team. He has made just one appearance for City thus far this season, in a qualifier for the Champions League, a tournament he now won’t be playing in.
And if his agent doesn’t shut his big yap—or open it for the right words—Yaya might not be playing in any competition at all.