Guardiola celebrates with “cigars”: What City has achieved is a miracle

During a tour of the cup display among fans in Manchester on Monday, Pep Guardiola joked that returning from a two-goal deficit to a 3-2 win for “Citizens” over Aston Villa, was part of his plan on the way to winning the English Premier League title in football.
Manchester City overturned its delay against Aston Villa 0-2 until the 76th minute to win 3-2 in the “Hitchcocky” scenario over 5 crazy minutes, to win the title by one point over Liverpool (93 versus 92), who won a late victory in turn over Wolverhampton 3- 1.
Guardiola, 51, fulfilled his promise after the match, by puffing “cigars” as he climbed to the podium at the end of the tour.
City now have four titles won in the past five years under Guardiola, and six in the last 11 seasons.
“That was a 0-2 plan, calmly, calmly,” Guardiola said with a laugh. And after we scored the goals, it was a great night.”
“Everyone knows that what happened is a wonderful achievement,” he added. This is the most difficult league, in the six years since our arrival we have achieved four. Happiness in all respects is the greatest reward we can have.”
Despite their domestic dominance, the Champions League remained an elusive dream for Manchester City even as billions were spent to put together an excellent team.
The last disappointment was the harsh exit against Real Madrid in the semi-finals of the continental competition earlier this May.
That elimination could have affected the team’s path on the way to the league title, but he quickly regained his balance and scored the necessary ten points from the last four games.
“There was a lot of tension after the defeat against Madrid and a lot of difficult matches,” said Guardiola, who has achieved extraordinary achievements in the domestic leagues during the last decade with Barcelona (2009, 2010, 2011), Bayern Munich (2014, 2015, 2016) and Manchester City (2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022). We never give up and we have to be very proud of the group.”
But he said earlier, “Winning the league is more difficult, there are many weeks, matches, injuries, good and bad times, but the success has been there all the time five years ago.”
“I’m not saying that the Champions League is not important, we love to win it (…), but winning 38 games in a row is different, and that’s why I’ve always loved it since I was a player.”
legends
Many of the City players whom Guardiola called “legends” appeared to have spent most of the past 24 hours celebrating their victory.
Jack Grealish offers to buy everyone on the roadside a drink in case they want to meet him in town later.
Belgian Kevin De Bruyne was named the club’s player of the season amid celebrations. Asked if he thought it was all over at 0-2, De Bruyne said: “Yes, for about 10 seconds. Then we went and did it. I can say we did it the Citi way. Now it’s so amazing.”
The event became a farewell party for club captain Fernandinho, who will return to his native Brazil this summer after nine years and 12 trophies with the club.
“When I first came here and met someone from the team, they told me, listen, we want you to be one of the leaders, we want you to be a hero,” the 37-year-old said.
“When I look back, all the titles we’ve won are really special,” he concluded.