Manchester City dispirited after loss
The Premier League season is barely past the halfway point and already Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has virtually given up on winning the title.
The world’s most coveted coach can’t have envisioned his first year in English soccer being this tough.
It takes something special to overshadow a match between bitter rivals Manchester United and Liverpool, but City’s 4-0 loss at Everton on Sunday did just that.
As he slumped to the heaviest loss of his career in a domestic league match, Guardiola — with his arms folded — was seen staring into space while he sat in the Goodison Park dugout. At other times, he had his face in his hands.
City has dropped out of the Champions Leagues positions, into fifth place, and 10 points behind first-place Chelsea.
Asked if the gap to first place was now too great, Guardiola said: “(To) the first one? Yes. Ten points is a lot of points. The second one is three points. We have to see.”
A fifth loss of the league season was administered by a team managed by Guardiola’s friend and former Barcelona teammate, Ronald Koeman.
“Pep Guardiola knows it is a project at Manchester City,” Koeman said. “Of course, maybe they expected better results and a defeat like this is really strong but Pep has the experience to turn it around.”
Man United kicked off less than an hour after City’s drubbing but couldn’t get a win that would have put the neighbors tied on points, drawing 1-1 on Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s late goal against Liverpool at Old Trafford.
After 21 of 38 games, neither City and United — the two preseason title favorites — are in the top four. Two high-profile managers were always going to have their reputation tarnished this season, with six big teams challenging for four Champions League spots.
Few would have predicted they’d be Guardiola and Jose Mourinho. Spanish league: Sevilla scored two late goals to end Real Madrid’s 40-game unbeaten streak and move one point behind its rival atop La Liga with the 2-1 win.
Cristiano Ronaldo gave Madrid the lead by converting a penalty kick in the 67th minute, but Sevilla rallied with an own goal by Sergio Ramos in the 85th. Stevan Jovetic scored the winner from outside the area two minutes into injury time at Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan Stadium in Seville.
The result handed Madrid its first defeat since a 2-0 loss at Wolfsburg in April in the quarterfinals of the Champions League last season.