For Manchester City Football Club tomorrow is of course, first and foremost about saying goodbye to Pep Guardiola, but there will be other farewells. This will also be the final game for defender John Stones and midfielder Bernardo Silva. Let’s start with the latter, who will be making his 460th appearance with the club on Championship Sunday.
Silva, who scored 76 goals and won 20 major trophies during his time at the Etihad, will be honored by the club with a celebratory mosaic.
Championship Sunday FYIs
Aston Villa at Manchester City
Kickoff: Sunday May 24, 4pm BST, Etihad Stadium, Manchester, UK
Team News for Both Sides: go here
Micah Richards on Vincent Kompany Potentially Succeeding Pep Guardiola Someday: go here
Manchester City News and Notes Part 1: go here
Standings:
Manchester City- clinched second place
Aston Villa- Clinched UEFA Champions League qualification in two ways, by winning the Europa League title and finishing in the top five.
Bernardo will see his mosaic installed adjacent to the training pitch for the men’s senior team. Silva will become the fourth City player to be honored with a mosaic, joining Vincent Kompany, Sergio Aguero and David Silva.
And we’ll also see a fifth celebratory mosaic installed, this one honoring John Stones. The English defender now moves on after 10 years at the club, where he featured 294 times, scored 19 goals and won 20 trophies. The Stones mosaic depicts his iconic goal-line clearance in the 2-1 victory over Liverpool during the 2018/19 season.
That play was critical, in an iconic game which secured the Premier League title that season.
And then finally, Guardiola admitted what his biggest regret his about his time at City. The Catalan wishes that he would have given a real chance to English goalkeeper Joe Hart in 2016. Within weeks of taking the gig at City, Guardiola sent Hart out on loan to Torino.
The club then signed Claudio Bravo, before adding Éderson (who became the eventual number 1) the following year.
“I want to confess, I have regrets,” Guardiola said to Sky Sports (as transcribed by ESPN FC). “When you take a lot of decisions, a lot, lot of decisions, you make mistakes. But there is one regret that I have deep inside for many years, that I didn’t give a chance to Joe Hart to be with me to prove himself how good a keeper he was.”
“I should have done, not because…all respect for Claudio, all respect for Ede who came in, they were important, but in that moment, I could have said, ‘Okay Joe, let’s try to do it together. If it doesn’t work, okay, we’ll change it’.
“But it happened. Life is sometimes…I have to take decisions and sometimes I’m not fair enough.”
Guardiola was not done opining on the topic, as he further added:
“Maybe with time then and learning… But I regret it from that time. In that moment, I said, ‘I believe in that’. Always I am stubborn in my decisions, when I believe in that.
“When I have doubts, I talk with people, but when I’m completely sure, 100 percent, I say, ‘Guys, we have to do it in that way’, and I have been at a club that has supported me absolutely in everything with that.”
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, Ratings and RG. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the Washington Post.