After Manchester City crashed out of the Club World Cup 4-3 to Al-Hilal in Orlando, Pep Guardiola blamed a lack of ruthlessness, and stated that Rodri suffered an injury set-back.
City were eliminated by Marcus Leonardo’s 112th-minute winner on Monday night at the Camping World Stadium in the shock result of the inaugural 32-team Club World Cup. Guardiola’s team wasted a number of chances, with Jeremy Doku, Erling Haaland, Josko Gvardiol, Ruben Dias and Savinho among those who failed to put City out of sight in the opening half.
Guardiola said: “In the end we have to score and be clinical. They did not create much in the first half, we did but could not finish it. I had a feeling we could go through. We allow them to make transitions [but] we created a lot.
“It is a pity, we have been on an incredible journey together [here] and in a good place. The vibe was really good, I cannot thank Manchester City enough and especially the players for training and how they have been playing.”
Rodri entered as a 53-minute replacement but was forced off in the 100th due to what Guardiola stated was an injury. The Spaniard was making only a fifth appearance since returning from a serious knee injury.
The manager said: “Rodri – he complained about his situation.”
City opened the scoring on nine minutes through Bernardo Silva, then goals on 46 and 53 minutes from Leonardo and Malcolm gave Al-Hilal the lead. Haaland equalised two minutes later to take the tie into extra-time before Kalidou Koulibaly’s strike was answered by Phil Foden, ahead of Leonardo’s winner.
Guardiola said: “We would have loved to have continued, it is only here every four years. We had a feeling that the team is doing well but now we go home and it is time to rest [physically] and rest our minds for the new season.”
The Catalan was asked if enough has been seen for him to believe City can challenge again next term. “It is too early to say,” Guardiola said. “But there have been so many good things I did not see [recently] in the past. The relationship between the players, our captain [Silva] helped a lot and the standards from our staff. I felt we were happy here, the training sessions have been really good.
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“[But] Al-Hilal has a lot of quality. They are a complete team that can run and run – I have a big opinion of them but we [still] did a good game.”
Al-Hilal manager Simone Inzaghi was full of praise for his side: “Tonight we had to do something extraordinary because we knew how good Manchester City are, we knew we had to climb Mount Everest without oxygen and we were great. Guardiola is the best coach in the world but tonight we did our best and we deserved the result.”
