Haaland, Guardiola gives the reasons for his replacement

Erling Haaland and Manchester City strolled against Leipzig (7-0) on Tuesday evening in the round of 16 second leg. Author of a quintuplet on the lawn of the Etihad Stadium, the Norwegian striker joined Luiz Adriano and Lionel Messi within the very closed circle of players who managed to score 5 goals in the Champions League. And no doubt that the native of Leeds could have made matters worse by achieving the sextuplet. But his coach Pep Guardiola decided otherwise, choosing to take him out in the 63rd minute to bring in Julian Alvarez. This did not prevent the Cyborg from expressing his frustration to the Spanish technician.

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5 – Erling Haaland is the 3rd player to score 5 goals in a Champions League game after Luiz Adriano in October 2014 (with Shakhtar Donetsk against BATE Borisov) and Lionel Messi in March 2012 (with Barcelona against Bayer Leverkusen). Garden. pic.twitter.com/MHSFvmhPcv

— OptaJean (@OptaJean) March 14, 2023

Sport “If he gets there at 22, his life will be boring”

«I told Pep(Guardiola, editor’s note) leaving that I would have liked to register a double hat-trick (one in the first period and one in the second), but hey, what do you want? », thus confided the former member of Borussia Dortmund. However, on the side of the master to play Cityzens, this change proved to be quite justifiable.

“If he gets there at 22, his life will be boring. Now he can do it in the future. No, I made the switch because the game was over.”explained Guardiola.The problem is that as soon as he does not score two or three goals in a match, he is criticized. He’s a huge competitor, he’s scored five goals and it’s not easy,he added.Today he scored 5 goals in 30 or 35 touches of the ball, that’s what we want. It’s hard to score when you don’t touch enough balls and sometimes it was his fault because he doesn’t move enough, but sometimes it was ours, like in the second half in Leipzig. »