Man City vs Spurs | Ange and Guardiola recall friendly in Japan in 2019
Ange Postecoglou certainly made an impact on Pep Guardiola when his Yokohama F. Marinos side faced City in a pre-season match in July, 2019.
Premier League champions at the time, City came through 3-1 against the J1 League side at the Nissan Stadium, but the stats make interesting reading – showing, again, Ange’s belief in his philosophy, whoever he’s up against. His team had more possession (58-42), made more passes (607-455) and had 11 efforts at goal to City’s 13. City eventually secured their win in the second minute of added time.
Now they meet again in the Premier League at the Etihad on Sunday (4.30pm). Asked about that match in his pre-match press conference, City boss Guardiola said: “I saw clips of his team play and I said, ‘wow’, there were things in there I really liked. I told my players we are going to face a good team. We won because we had better players, but I realised this was the first time I met him. Since then, I have followed him, and in a short time he is here.”
Ange was also asked about the game in his pre-match press conference on Friday. “I remember it well,” he said. “You’ve got to put some context, they were in pre-season, we were mid-season, so we were in good physical condition, but it was one of those moments…
“We could have gone into that game and said, ‘okay, let’s see how we can go about trying to beat Manchester City’ or we can go in and say, ‘let’s just go in and play our football against Manchester City and see where that takes us’ and that’s what we did.
“I said to the boys, ‘keep the ball, press them, be aggressive, do what we do on a weekly basis and you know what? If we get smacked 6-0, we get smacked 6-0, but we’ve measured ourselves’. We came out of that game with real belief, even against the very best. They felt really good about themselves, even though we lost 3-1. They enjoyed it. They enjoyed that challenge. For us, as a group at that time, it was a perfect exercise to say, ‘let’s continue down this path, this is the team we want to be’.”
