Former Manchester United defender Patrice Evra – he of the Luis Suarez ‘bite’ incident notoriety when the latter was with Liverpool – has again caused quite a stir as he launched an extraordinarily acrimonious attack on Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola that leaned heavily towards harboring some kind of personal grudge against the Spaniard.
Gary Lineker has come to the defence of Guardiola and hit back at Patrice Evra over the former Manchester United star’s vindictive attack on Pep Guardiola.
Clearly taking great delight in the Blues’ exit from the Champions League at the hands of Real Madrid last week, the former defender jumped on the opportunity to lash out at the Manchester City boss with a vicious dig laced with acrimony. After posting a joke on Instagram at City’s expense, Evra followed it up with some controversial comments while working as a pundit on Amazon Prime.
The former France international was more than a tad self-righteous in accusing Guardiola of wanting control of his side and argued it had resulted in City being left lacking leaders on the pitch.
“Manchester City needs leaders, but Guardiola doesn’t want leaders,’ the Frenchman said in comments relayed by Marca.
“He doesn’t want personality. He’s the leader. That’s why when they’re in trouble they don’t want to. They don’t have anyone on the pitch to help them.
“He chooses his teams like that, he can’t train people with personality. He did it at Barcelona, but he builds his team to control everyone. When things go wrong, he always decides.
“City have made a mistake, it’s the truth. They are traumatised. They remind me of PSG: they are clubs based on money.”
Evra’s highly unprofessional comments though have seen him create a backlash among some of his fellow ex-professionals, including Lineker. The Match of the Day host has regularly praised Guardiola over the years, and vented his full displeasure at the Frenchman in his defence of the City boss.
Quoting Evra’s comments on Twitter, Lineker branded the former United man’s opinion as “utter nonsense”. The former striker doubled down on his comment when a reply agreed with Evra by saying “spot on. Ask Ibra”, with Lineker responding: “Ask Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol, De Bruyne, Muller, Pique, Lahm…”
Evra’s criticism aside, City could well be on course for another Premier League title, besides also having completed a huge coup ahead of next season with the signing of Erling Haaland. The club confirmed the transfer, with the Borussia Dortmund striker set to complete his move to the Etihad in the summer.
Clearly Evra is still smoldering from the humiliation of the Champions League loss handed out by Guardiola and his Barcelona boys despite it being so long in the past. The injured ego is truly an ugly thing.
It is certainly a sad sight to see individuals with questionable motives venting their views with a clear lack of decorum and professionalism, hiding behind the convenient camouflage of media protection, presuming they have full authority to pronounce judgment by taking potshots laced with venom on all and sundry.
Disgusting, to say the least.