Pep Guardiola Attempts to Defend "Everyone Supports Liverpool" Statement
The Manchester City manager may have raised more questions by attempting to clarify.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola made headlines earlier this month when he appeared to argue that "everyone" in England who wasn't a City fan was rooting for Liverpool to win the Premier League title.
Guardiola sought to clarify his comments ahead of City's clash with former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa in his press conference ahead of the final game of the 2021-22 season, suggesting that he may have been misunderstood—or that he may have made his points imprecisely—because he was not speaking in his first language.
"I'm sure my English isn't very good after four or five years," he admitted. "I said that when it comes to championships, the teams with more history have more supporters." It occurs in Spain, Germany, and Italy. In the last decade, we have been outsiders. "In countries all over the world, there are teams that people support more than others." Liverpool, Manchester United, and Arsenal all have a long history; we don't. That is why we consider it a privilege and will not squander this opportunity to enjoy the 95 minutes."
The key takeaways from this revision are that Guardiola appears to be saying that Liverpool has more fans because they have won more titles, whereas Manchester City is "new," with "new" presumably referring to them only being new to competing for titles after the influx of money that preceded his move to join the club.
Following his logic, City are still in the process of building their global fanbase, owing to the fact that they have only recently become competitive and have won titles in a much shorter period of time than the Reds.
While it may not appear to be an unfair proposal on the surface, one wonders why, in his initial statement, he noted that while Liverpool had been strong in Europe—winning six European Cups since their first in 1976/77—the Reds had not been particularly strong domestically in the Premier League era, "In the Premier League, they've won one in 30 years," he says.
While this is true, it appears that Guardiola is trying to have it both ways, complaining that City lacks a strong fanbase because they haven't won as much as Liverpool while also touting the fact that, at least in England, City has more silverware than the Reds in the Premier League era.
The same distinction is not made between the European Cup and the Champions League, which was also rebranded in 1992. After all, according to the same metric, Liverpool has only won two Champions Leagues in the last 30 years. Perhaps he will have to explain the differences further standard at some point.
Regardless, we can only do our best to give Pep Guardiola the benefit of the doubt and support his claim that Liverpool has more fans than "new" Manchester City due to dominance in multiple competitions over a long history.
He certainly knows what he's talking about: as a former manager of massive Barcelona and Bayern Munich, he speaks from direct experience when mentioning other countries with similar fanbase patterns. He should be able to draw on those experiences when talking about what it's like to manage a "new" or "outsider" club like Manchester City.
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