Latest news with #ClaudioEcheverri
The Independent
25-05-2025
- Sport
- The Independent
Jack Grealish left out of Man City squad to face Fulham as uncertainty over future intensifies
Jack Grealish has been left out of Manchester City's squad to face Fulham on the final day of the Premier League season, with his future under Pep Guardiola in doubt. Grealish has only started seven top-flight games this season and did not feature in the FA Cup final defeat to Crystal Palace, instead watching on as the 19-year-old debutant Claudio Echeverri was called into action. He has scored just four times in the Premier League over the last two seasons and only netted once in the top flight, Champions League and FA Cup during this campaign. It marks a major fall from grace for Grealish after he played a starring role in the Treble-winning side in 2022-23, and he could find himself following Kevin de Bruyne in being shuffled out the door at the Etihad. The 29-year-old was signed for £100m from Aston Villa in 2021, at the time a Premier League record fee, but has been reduced to a bit-part player for City in recent years. He has two years left on his contract. His lack of minutes has also hurt his England chances; he missed out on the Euros squad last year and has not been called back to Thomas Tuchel 's squad for the upcoming internationals. Guardiola said last week that a decision would be made on Grealish's future at the end of the season, with the winger a casualty of City's enormous squad. The manager recently half-jokingly threatened to leave if the squad wasn't reduced, saying: 'I said to the club I don't want that [a bigger squad]. I don't want to leave five or six players in the freezer. I don't want that. I will quit.' City require a draw against Fulham on the final day of the season to secure Champions League football for next year after a season to forget for Guardiola's side.
The Sun
25-05-2025
- Sport
- The Sun
Jack Grealish ‘dropped from Manchester City squad for final game of season' as £100m man edges closer to transfer exit
JACK GREALISH has been dropped from Manchester City's squad to face Fulham this afternoon. Pep Guardiola 's side need a point to guarantee Champions League qualification for next season. 1 Grealish, 29, has fallen out of favour this term, starting just one Prem match in 2025. According to the Telegraph, the former Aston Villa star will not feature at all at Craven Cottage. SunSport revealed yesterday that Grealish believes he may have to leave City in order to force his way back into the England set-up. The attacker was left out of Thomas Tuchel 's latest squad announced on Friday. Grealish is set to for summer talks with City chiefs in order to determine his future. The 39-cap star has two years remaining on his contract at the Etihad. Guardiola opted to leave the former £100million man on the bench even as his side chased an equaliser in last week's FA Cup final. The City boss instead turned to 19-year-old Claudio Echeverri, despite the Argentine having been yet to play since his February arrival. Guardiola recently pleaded for City chiefs to trim his squad ahead of next season. The 54-year-old admitted: "I said to the club I don't want that [a bigger squad]. "I don't want to leave five or six players in the freezer. I don't want that. I will quit. Make a shorter squad, I will stay. "It's impossible for my soul to [tell] my players in the tribune [stands] that they cannot play." Grealish's availability is set to spark transfer interest this summer. But his £300,000 a week wages may provide a hefty stumbling block. The England hopeful could even go out on loan in a bid for first team football.
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Jack Grealish looks out of time at Manchester City now Guardiola has moved the goalposts
Jack Grealish is prowling. The wind tousling his hair, the ball at his feet, the way it was always meant to be. In front of him a wall of Bournemouth defenders jumpily stands guard, eyes wide like stags ready to bolt. Grealish shuffles inside, body feinting, hips dancing. You want to know what happens next. What happens next is that the referee blows for full time. It's the 97th minute; Grealish came on in the 91st. In that time Bournemouth somehow managed to score a goal. It wasn't Grealish's fault, but it did eat up most of the time in which he was hoping to make an impression. No matter. As the game ends, the cameras hunt down a treble-winning City legend making what might well be his final appearance at the Etihad Stadium. Kevin De Bruyne takes his handshakes and his tributes. Grealish slips quietly down the tunnel. Still, even this brief uncredited cameo represents progress of sorts. In City's previous three games Grealish did not even make it off the bench. In last weekend's FA Cup final, with City chasing an equaliser, he watched as Pep Guardiola brought on a 19-year-old debutant in Claudio Echeverri instead of him. Opponents against whom Grealish has played 90 minutes in 2025: Salford, Leyton Orient, Plymouth, Leicester. Over the league season as a whole Grealish has played just 22% of City's minutes. After the Bournemouth game on Tuesday night Grealish will have heard that Guardiola would rather quit City than be forced to carry on leaving players 'in the freezer', frozen out of the matchday squad. On Grealish he declared: 'He has to come back to play minutes to start to play again.' Want to play minutes, Jack? It's simple! Just play more minutes! Of course it is just possible Grealish may be able to read between the lines here. And in a way, the separation process has been taking place over years rather than weeks. Signed in the summer of 2021 for a British record £100m – and still the seventh most expensive footballer of all time – Grealish feels in retrospect increasingly like a short-term solution to a short-term need, a player signed for a team and perhaps even a game that no longer really exists. And of course the first thing that needs to be said at this point is, you know, fair enough. £100m should be buying you a generation-defining player: instead, apart from one superb season in the 2022-23 treble-winning side, Grealish never really came close to justifying the faith invested in him. A record of 12 goals and 12 assists in four Premier League seasons speaks for itself. As Guardiola put it earlier this season: 'In the end, it is about performance, delivering assists and goals.' Even so, it's instructive to go back to Grealish's first season at City, a season in which Grealish openly fretted about his lack of hard numbers and was slapped down in public by his manager for doing so. 'Always we talk about statistics,' Guardiola scolded. 'Players today play for the statistics but this is the biggest mistake they can do. We didn't buy him to score 45 goals. He has other qualities.' But of course the City team of 2021-22 was flush with goals from all areas: from Riyad Mahrez and Raheem Sterling, Phil Foden and De Bruyne, and Gabriel Jesus and Bernardo Silva. The following season a 52-goal striker would be signed in Erling Haaland. What Guardiola demanded from Grealish was control. Control of the ball, control of tempo, progression up the pitch, acceleration, deceleration. These days, with Haaland ailing and City scrapping to reach next season's Champions League, the demands are different. Even compared with two years ago the Premier League is more dynamic, more vertical, this City less able to dominate territory than their predecessors. Whatever happens against Fulham on Sunday, City will end this season with their lowest average possession since the Manuel Pellegrini era. In this shifting landscape the capacity for a struggling side to carry a winger with no straight-line pace and no goal threat is gently receding. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion So if Guardiola subtly moved the goalposts on Grealish, perhaps it is because the goalposts also subtly moved on Guardiola. The ability to retain possession in dangerous areas has become less important than the ability to use it quickly, which is why players such as Jérémy Doku and Savinho have found themselves preferred this season. The signing of Omar Marmoush in January, a forward who operates in very similar spaces to Grealish, is another reminder of the rapidly changing nature of the job: one defined by speed, directness, thrumming momentum and getting shots off. Naturally there will be the usual mutterings about Grealish's lifestyle, but while this is a player who could probably do with getting photographed in the pub a little less, there is little evidence on the pitch to suggest that he has neglected himself, or let his physical standards drop. Rather, the tale of Grealish is a parable of how extreme wealth inequality allows the biggest clubs not just to accumulate talent but to mould it: to change its nature, to render it more immediately useful but also a little more boring, to narrow its horizons. On joining City, Grealish was forced to adjust his game radically: to focus more on recycling possession, winning fouls, eking out yards rather than unleashing the tricks and flourishes that made him so beloved at Aston Villa. These were the compromises necessary to take Grealish from the Championship to the top step of the Champions League, and he was handsomely rewarded for it too. But there is a certain irony in the fact that the Grealish of Villa between 2019 and 2021 would probably be the perfect player for City now, and yet the Grealish of City now is very much not. So despite signing Grealish for £100m there is no real pressure on City to make this signing work. Take the hit, sell him to Newcastle or Tottenham, move on without regrets. Grealish is 29 now. He has given City his peak years. And he will be bleakly aware, in more ways than one, that he never had quite as much time as he thought he did.
Free Malaysia Today
21-05-2025
- Sport
- Free Malaysia Today
Man City's Guardiola demands slimmer squad for next season
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said it was 'impossible' for his 'soul' to keep telling players they would be watching the match from the stands. (AP pic) MANCHESTER : Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has told the club he wants to work with a tighter squad next season as it troubles his 'soul' to leave so many players in the stands when everyone is fit. Regular internationals Savinho, Abdukodir Khusanov and Claudio Echeverri were all unable to find a place in the squad yesterday as City beat Bournemouth 3-1. England's James McAtee and Rico Lewis also missed out. City have 28 players in the first team, not counting four who are out on loan, and have one of the most valuable squads in the world with some media reports valuing it at over €1.3 billion. 'I said to the club … I don't want to leave five or six players in the freezer,' Guardiola told reporters after City moved up to third with one match left in the campaign. 'I don't want that. I will quit. Make a shorter squad, I will stay.' Despite their huge squad City faced an injury crisis late last year, with the side going on a five-match losing streak in all competitions between October-November. They brought in Omar Marmoush, Vitor Reis, Khusanov and Nico Gonzalez at a cost of more than US$224 million in the January transfer window to help address the problem. But with defenders John Stones and Nathan Ake the only two players currently out with injury, Guardiola said it was 'impossible' for his 'soul' to keep telling so many players they would be watching the match from the stands. 'It is a question for the club. I don't want to have 24, 25, 26 players when everyone is fit. If I have injuries, unlucky, we have some players (from) the academy and we do it,' the manager added. Guardiola, who extended his contract with City until 2027 in November, will lead the club as they defend their Club World Cup title next month. Witness football history in Malaysia as Manchester United take on the Asean All-Stars – it's the clash you can't afford to miss. Book your seat now at before they're gone!
Asharq Al-Awsat
21-05-2025
- Sport
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Man City's Guardiola Demands Slimmer Squad for Next Season
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has told the club he wants to work with a tighter squad next season as it troubles his "soul" to leave so many players in the stands when everyone is fit. Regular internationals Savinho, Abdukodir Khusanov and Claudio Echeverri were all unable to find a place in the squad on Tuesday as City beat Bournemouth 3-1. England's James McAtee and Rico Lewis also missed out, Reuters reported. City have 28 players in the first team, not counting four who are out on loan, and have one of the most valuable squads in the world with some media reports valuing it at over 1.3 billion euros ($1.47 billion). "I said to the club ... I don't want to leave five or six players in the freezer," Guardiola told reporters after City moved up to third with one match left in the campaign. "I don't want that. I will quit. Make a shorter squad, I will stay." Despite their huge squad City faced an injury crisis late last year, with the side going on a five-match losing streak in all competitions between October-November. They brought in Omar Marmoush, Vitor Reis, Khusanov and Nico Gonzalez at a cost of more than $224 million in the January transfer window to help address the problem. But with defenders John Stones and Nathan Ake the only two players currently out with injury, Guardiola said it was "impossible" for his "soul" to keep telling so many players they would be watching the match from the stands. "It is a question for the club. I don't want to have 24, 25, 26 players when everyone is fit. If I have injuries, unlucky, we have some players (from) the academy and we do it," the manager added. Guardiola, who extended his contract with City until 2027 in November, will lead the club as they defend their Club World Cup title next month.
