Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola was compelled to make a defense for his star striker Erling Haaland after a tough 90 minutes in the Champions League.<\/p>\n
Guardiola used his hands emphatically to visually demonstrate his defense of his star striker after Haaland\u2019s goalscoring streak ended in their Champions League opening game against Internazionale.<\/p>\n
Haaland has sconvincingly scored nine goals from his opening four Premier League games to set up more records, and only needed one more against Inter to become the quickest player to a century of goals for a club. However, it now appears Cristiano Ronaldo’s run of 105 games at Real Madrid can only be levelled sometime in the near future after the City No.9 was strapped down by a brigade of burly defenders in their opening Champions League game.<\/p>\n
Inter were understandably jubilant in having successfully stopped the Norwegian from adding to his goal count this season and Guardiola was asked after the game why he thought the 24-year-old had found it so difficult. However even before the question had finished, the City manager began gesturing with five fingers on one hand and one on the other to make his point.<\/p>\n
“There were six players around him,” he said. “Six. Three behind, three in front. That’s how they kept him out of the game.<\/p>\n
“That makes it difficult for any player. [Francesco] Acerbi, [Alessandro] Basotni were five metres away from him, [Hakan] Calhanoglou, [Piotr] Zielinski in front of him. That’s tough.<\/p>\n
“We tried to use the spaces, that’s why [Ilkay] Gundogan had a couple of chances but Inter were stronger than us physically. We needed to get more players up alongside Erling and that’s what we did. I knew that Inter would defend like that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"