Actress Julia Roberts was at Old Trafford for a Premier League match against West Ham United back in November 2016 and Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola recalled at length the American actress’ visit to their neighborhood rivals after winning their 7-0 return leg match against RB Leipzig in the Champions League.
Manchester United seized upon the opportunity to lighten up and take a fun dig at Guardiola following comments he had made about the American actress after their recent victory over the Bundesliga club.
While his side again succeeded in progressing to the Champions league quarter-finals and are favorites to win it for the first time – putting seven goals past the German side on Tuesday night and striker Erling Haaland scoring five goals to break yet more records in the competition – the City boss appeared disgruntled and had already considered himself to have failed for obviously entirely different reasons.
Guardiola then proceeded to throw light on his stance, admitting his admiration for Roberts being one of his three idols but who made a special visit to Old Trafford for a Premier League match against West Ham United, instead of paying a visit to City continues to gnaws away at him.
The Old Trafford club has since since capitalized on the manager’s comments in an effort to poke further fun at their cross-city rivals, posting the saucy tweet
“Throwing it back to when Julia Roberts visited Old Trafford” on their social media channels on Wednesday morning. Accompanying the message is a selection of images showing the actress inside Old Trafford watching her children kicking a football around on the pitch, including one with Roberts standing alongside then-United player Michael Carrick.
Explaining how he interpreted the 2016 trip, Guardiola explained during his press conference: “Julia Roberts came to Manchester, not in the 80s and 90s when [United] were with Sir Alex Ferguson winning titles after titles. She came during the period we were better than United over the last four or five years.
“She went to visit Man United, she didn’t come to see us, so that’s why even if I win the Champions League, we will not be compared because of the fact that Julia Roberts came to Manchester and didn’t come to see us – my idol.”
Well, now we know for a fact that the Spanish doyen is indeed human and is not beyond pouting and sulking, despite still maintaining his internationally-acclaimed reputation accepted by even his peers as the best the sport has ever seen.