Manager made a huge call when he started the overhaul in his first season at the club
Pep Guardiola has confessed his decision to move on from Joe Hart remains his biggest regret from his time at Manchester City, saying he should have given the former England goalkeeper the opportunity to prove himself under the new regime.
Sunday’s game against Aston Villa will be Guardiola’s final match as City coach. He spoke to the media about one of the earliest and most significant calls of his spell at the club. Hart, City’s established No 1 and a two-time Premier League winner, was sent on loan to Torino weeks after Guardiola’s arrival in 2016 before Claudio Bravo and later Ederson were brought in.
It was the beginning of Guardiola’s overhaul in his first season at City. Hart never played for the club again.
“I want to confess, I have regrets,” Guardiola told Sky Sports. “When you take a lot of decisions, a lot, lot of decisions, you make mistakes.
“But there is one regret that I have deep inside for many years, that I didn’t give a chance to Joe Hart to be with me to prove himself how good a keeper he was.
“I should have done. In that moment, I could have said, ‘Okay Joe, let’s try to do it together. If it doesn’t work, okay, we’ll change it.’ ”
Guardiola said the episode remained with him because of the human side of management, describing player relationships and difficult conversations as among the hardest aspects of the role.
He said he had always tried to deal with players “with humanity and respect” and apologised if he had fallen short in that regard.
Guardiola said: “If in that I failed, I do apologise, but it never, never was my intention or the intention of the club.”
