Kyle Walker will be eternally grateful towards Pep Guardiola for transforming his career when Manchester City signed him from Tottenham Hotspur in 2017.
Walker has loved his time at Manchester City despite the sudden nature of his loan move to AC Milan during the January transfer window.
Pep Guardiola was key to the Englishman becoming one of the best right-backs in the world as he gave him a more withdrawn role at City that helped to unleash just how incredible he was defensively.
Guardiola turned Walker into an elite player and one who has a case for being named in an all-time Premier League XI.
Kyle Walker says some Man City players ‘hate’ when Pep Guardiola announces his team
However, working with a genius like Pep Guardiola can have some cons even if they are outweighed by the pros, as Kyle Walker would attest to.
Guardiola is known to keep players on their toes anyway and while Walker must be accustomed to that after working with him for nearly a decade, not everyone might feel the same.
Speaking on The Kyle Walker Podcast, the Englishman revealed that some Manchester City players did not enjoy the fact that Pep Guardiola announced his starting line-up on the day or two days before games: “At Manchester City, there were a team of 24 quality players who’d walk into any team in the Premier League. The manager would more or less name the team on the day of the game, he wanted everyone to prepare properly.”
Walker added that Guardiola’s habit impacted the players’ routine before matchdays as well: “The manager would more or less name the team on the day of the game, he wanted everyone to prepare properly. The downside of naming the team on the day of the game was that some players wouldn’t eat the right pre-match, maybe they’d go to sleep later.”
“I know some players hate not knowing the day before. It’s down to the manager, sometimes he’d name it two days before, one day before or even as we’re going up to the ground.”
Pep Guardiola’s shock starting XI made ex-Man City player cry
One can understand why Walker’s teammates at Manchester City may feel frustrated due to Pep Guardiola’s unpredictability in terms of announcing his starting line-ups.
Former Manchester City forward Gabriel Jesus told The Denilson Show that when Guardiola started Oleksandr Zinchenko as a false nine against Paris Saint-Germain in the 2021/2022 season, he eventually started crying.
Jesus recalled in 2023: “There was a Champions League game, PSG, at home, in which he put Zinchenko as a false nine. Crazy thing.”
“The day before, he didn’t even use him in training, he had put me in as a striker… Zinchenko even joked with me: ‘That day I felt bad for you.’ Two hours before the game, there’s a team talk, the team eats, rests for 30 minutes and goes to the game. He told us the team…I didn’t even eat. I went straight to the room, crying, I called my mother to talk: ‘I want to leave.’ I’m going home, because he put him [Oleksandr Zinchenko] on, and he didn’t put me on. He put a left-back there. I went crazy.”
“I didn’t warm up. I felt bad. Five minutes after Kylian Mbappe scored the goal for 1-0, he [Pep Guardiola] called me. I gave an assist and scored, we turned it around, 2-1.”
Gabriel Jesus concluded: “In the next [Champions League] game [a 2-1 win at RB Leipzig], I thought I was going to play, and I didn’t play. There was a lot of that with him [Guardiola], and it’s not easy. But one evolves. It is really hard. That’s when I decided, I didn’t want to stay any more. And I decided to leave.”
