Before the Manchester Derby, City forward Raheem Sterling was praised extensively by his manager Pep Guardiola. Friday bright the announcement of the England international inking a new long term contract extension with the club, and Guardiola defending his polarizing player against all the different types of criticism that has been leveled against the winger over the course of his career.
So what does Sterling go out on do on Sunday? Pointlessly showboat towards the end of a hyped up derby match where emotions were already running high. Manchester City beat Manchester United very handily today, with the 3-1 score not quite doing justice to the one-sidedness of the affair.
Sterling seemed to be rubbing salt in the wounds of their arch-rivals with some fancy footwork that drew the ire of United midfielder Juan Mata; someone known for being seeing the good in everybody. In other words, when you have angered Juan Mata, you have truly done something, well, unsportsmanlike to say the least.
City manager Pep Guardiola got hot under the collar about the Raheem Sterling step overs as well, having a heated exchange with his star player after the game had gone final.
Watch the sequence, and then Guardiola’s post match interview in which he responds to a query about the incident below:
Pep Guardiola gave Raheem Sterling a telling off as soon as the Manchester derby ended. Was it disrespectful to Sterling? Rebecca Lowe and Kyle Martino discuss. pic.twitter.com/i3gesTpIlG
— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) November 11, 2018
By the time he got to the interview, Guardiola had cooled down and thus he displayed the calm polish that we have all come to expect from him in media opportunities.
“I don’t like it when you make some movements with the hands,” the Spaniard told the interviewer.
“They know how to play simple and they did it but at the end he made the move with the legs and I didn’t like it so much. But again he’s young and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to happen again.”
One can certainly understand why Guardiola was so livid with Raheem Sterling; given how much he had just strongly vouched for his character a couple days earlier.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, regularly appears as a guest pundit on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
He also contributes sociopolitical essays to Lineups.com and Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. The content of his cat’s Instagram account is unquestionably superior to his.