Pep Guardiola Praises Manchester City ‘Legends’ After Latest Premier League Title Win

“These guys are legends already,” said Pep Guardiola as Manchester City won their fourth Premier League title in five years.

The Catalan manager described his players as eternal legends of the club, and it was apt that one of the longest-serving, Ilkay Gundogan, played a key role in the win that secured the league title on the final day of the season.

It wasn’t smooth sailing, and it rarely is with City, even despite a successful restructuring of the club’s operations in the past decade or so under the ownership of City Football Group. But it wouldn’t be City if it was entirely straightforward.

It goes to show that even the most meticulous sporting planning is never a guarantee of success, but the players Guardiola is referring to when he talks of club and Premier League legends got the job done in the most joyous fashion for the fans in attendance on Sunday.

Three goals in five minutes, two for Gundogan and another from a player who is part of Guardiola’s second great team, Rodri, turned a tense afternoon into one of celebrations at the Etihad Stadium.

Of the eleven players who started the game, eight were in the squad for Guardiola’s first league title at the club back in 2018.

Ederson, Kevin De Bruyne, Fernandinho, Bernardo Silva, and Gabriel Jesus played key roles back in the 2017/18 campaign, while John Stones made a useful 18 league appearances in a season interrupted by injury.

Aymeric Laporte joined in January 2018 and went on to become one of the best centre-backs in the league, and a then 17-year-old Phil Foden was also part of the squad. Kyle Walker remained on the bench against Aston Villa in the final game of 2021/22, but was also a member of that 2018 title-winning side.

The three players who did come off the bench against Villa on Sunday—Raheem Sterling, Oleksandr Zinchenko, and Gundogan—were also part of that initial Guardiola triumph, with each playing their part in the comeback from two goals down.

So it’s easy to see who the City boss is referring to when he speaks of such venerable figures at the club.

“In the last five years winning four Premier Leagues—these guys are legends already, people have to admit it,” Guardiola said after the game, an air of defiance in his voice as is often the case these days.

“This group of players are absolutely eternal in this club because what we achieved is so difficult to do.

“Just Sir Alex Ferguson with United has done it, years ago, two or three times, now I realise again the magnitude of Sir Alex Ferguson and his United.

“We felt the pressure during the last week. The players trained incredibly, we didn’t push the extra pressure at all. But we smell it.

“I’ve been here a few times in the past as a football player and manager, and this one is the most difficult one to win.

“All of us realise, four Premier Leagues in five years in this country is probably the best achievement we have done in our careers. It’s incredible.”

Guardiola described Gundogan as “the best runner in second positions that we have,” and it was the German’s movement, into the right spaces at the right time, that allowed him to score two important goals.

The first came from a Sterling cross from the right, headed in at the far post. Zinchenko’s work for the second goal, teeing up Rodri, was brilliant down the left, while De Bruyne set up Gundogan for his second in typical fashion, sniffing out a loose ball before charging into the box and delivering a perfect cross to the far post.

In the space of five or six minutes, these most familiar names took City fans from despair to delirium.

Guardiola is right to call them legends. Just a week after the club unveiled a statue of their all-time top scorer, Sergio Aguero, there are a handful of players putting their names forward for similar memorialisation.

But for now, their reward and recognition comes in the more than adequate shape of immediate honours—nine major trophies in the last five years to be exact, plus a record-breaking 100-point season in 2017/18 and a domestic treble unprecedented in English men’s football in 2019.

And with Guardiola contracted at the club for at least another season, there might still be more to come from his group of eternal legends.