Pep Guardiola has responded after Mauricio Pochettino failed to shake his hand on the back of Chelsea’s thrilling match against Manchester City.
On Sunday afternoon, Chelsea and City played out a Premier League classic as a late penalty from Cole Palmer rescued a dramatic 4-4 draw for the hosts.
As the final whistle sounded, Pochettino marched towards the referee Anthony Taylor, failing to shake Guardiola’s hand as a result.
The Chelsea boss was left unhappy after referee Taylor blew the final whistle when Chelsea looked like they were on the counter-attack.
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During his press conference, Guardiola responded, he said: “No problem. It's not a problem. I don't want to say one word. It's completely fine. The emotions happen to me sometimes. It's fine.”
Explaining his actions, Pochettino told reporters: “I need to apologise to Anthony, the referees and the fourth official. In this moment, I feel that maybe Raheem can go through and go to score the fifth and in this moment when the game finishes I turn and say: ‘What the ….?’ You know, what’s going on? I said: ‘Why stop in this moment, the action.’
“Then I turned and said “I deserve, I deserve to be booked.’ Because I crossed the limit, so I want to apologise because it’s not a good image for me and for football, this type of behaviour. I also want to apologise to Pep also because I did not see him in this moment.”
City boss Guardiola also described the match as ‘not normal’.
The Spaniard said: “It’s not normal 4-4. Usually we control more but I can’t remember a game when we come here and had the chances that we had. Even the games we won 0-1 and even last year’s game was much worse than we played today by a million times.
“Do you know what Chelsea have done [to build this team]? In the past it was City, City, City who have done that. Look at what Chelsea have done to create that fantastic team? So it’s normal. It was a fair result. It is what it is. Did you have fun?”
Topics: Mauricio Pochettino, Pep Guardiola, Manchester City, Chelsea, Football
Marcus Chan