Michael Plant has the latest from Pep Guardiola's press conference as the Manchester City manager discussed Rodri's Ballon d'Or success, Real Madrid's snub and Erik ten Hag's dismissal at Manchester United.
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00:00I'm at Manchester City's media centre where this afternoon Pep Guardiola held his pre-match
00:04press conference ahead of the game against Tottenham Hotspur in the Carabao Cup.
00:09Unsurprisingly, the big talking point was of course, Rodri, who last night became the
00:12first Manchester City player ever to win the Ballon d'Or. A huge achievement for the player
00:17and Guardiola was full of praise for him. Absolutely delighted for Rodri to claim that
00:21award but also delighted for Manchester City that they have a player who has won the highest
00:25individual accolade that you can have in world football. It says a lot about the club, it
00:29also says a lot, as he said, about, in general, the direction of Spanish football over the
00:33last 15-20 years and how many good players that they have managed to produce that country.
00:38Guardiola has managed quite a few of them over his time as a manager, none of whom have
00:42previously won the Ballon d'Or. Rodri, the first Spanish player in 64 years to claim
00:46that award. So Guardiola, absolutely delighted, absolutely delighted as well to see a holy
00:50midfielder win the award. He said he wasn't surprised to see Rodri win that prize.
00:55There was of course, a little bit of fallout from the award ceremony with Real Madrid not
00:58showing up and Guardiola was asked about that and said, listen, Real Madrid are entitled
01:02to do whatever they want. He said it's up to them if they want to congratulate him,
01:05if they don't, if they want to show up or not. But there was a little bit of a thinly
01:09veiled dig, I thought, in the fact that he referenced that last year Erling Haaland,
01:13who in the eyes of many probably should have won, but he said, you know, basically we showed
01:17up last year. Erling congratulated Lionel Messi, of course, another player. Pep Guardiola
01:21knows very well, implying that Real Madrid didn't carry themselves in the same sort of
01:25manner. So I thought it was a little bit of a dig at his, of course, a club he's got
01:29a longstanding rivalry with. And then of course, the other big talking point in football over
01:33the last 24 hours has been the dismissal of Eric Ten Hag across the road at Manchester
01:37United. Guardiola said that Ten Hag always carried himself with dignity, did a good job
01:42at United, said that he will come back stronger, but did admit that ultimately as a manager,
01:48you always are judged on your results. I think that was a little bit of an implication that
01:51Guardiola himself even acknowledges that the results across the road at Old Trafford just
01:55simply haven't been good enough. He said he'll miss the Dutchman, who of course he
01:58knows well from his time at Bayern Munich. But yeah, he'll be preparing for what is a
02:02fourth permanent Manchester United manager of his reign in this city when they meet in
02:08a couple of weeks' time at the Etihad.