What Pep Guardiola said to Man City squad in dressing room after VAR controversy vs Liverpool FC
Pep Guardiola may have been frustrated in his post-match interviews after Manchester City’s defeat at Liverpool, but he had a more pragmatic message to his squad in the dressing room.
City
were beaten at Anfield thanks to Mohamed Salah’s second-half goal, although the Blues felt hard done by when Phil Foden’s goal was ruled out after a VAR review for an earlier foul by Erling Haaland.
That decision took up much of the post-match discussion, with Guardiola
repeating the phrase ‘This is Anfield’ in multiple interviews when talking about the referee’s decision to overturn Foden’s goal. However, defender Ruben Dias says Guardiola took a different tone in the dressing room at full-time.
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“The coach was proud of the performance," Dias revealed, adding that the squad needed some reassurance that they had played well to soften the blow of the defeat.
"He was obviously frustrated with the result like all of us. But that is where our consistency comes from. Sometimes when the result is not the best we need to know if the process was good enough. Today, I think the team was there and we played a great match in terms of the game we played.
"We didn’t get the points, it is frustrating, but we move on. Football is not about what you deserve, it is more about what you take. I believe and it is our feeling that we did a very good game in all aspects.
"We need to keep pushing and we need to keep going because the team is playing very well. Today, the team was there. We were all fighting, we had our chance, but the ball didn’t go in. We were close to taking the three points. Football is like this and we just need to be ready. Most of all, we need to be consistent and keep going."
Dias also pointed to the two big moments in the second half which took the game away from City – Foden’s disallowed goal and then Salah’s winner on 76 minutes.
He said: "We need to be frustrated and not happy about not winning, but we also need to be smarter than that and know that we did a very good performance overall. Obviously, the game is decided in details and they ended up scoring. We know what we did, we did it right and we need to keep going.
“When there is a goal, everything changes. It would have been the same if our goal had not been disallowed. It is what it is, it is football and unfortunately these kinds of mistakes are part of football. We just need to keep going.”
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