Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney reveals why Manchester City 53-year-old manager Pep Guardiola is too be held responsible for what went wong in the final group matches at Euro 2024

The legendary player for Manchester United didn’t seem afraid to upset some people with his statement.

The Englishman stopped playing football in 2021, so he may not care about football rivalries at this point in his career. Instead, he wants to get better as a boss, even if that means working with the Manchester City legend.

Wayne Rooney pokes fun at Pep Guardiola in a sly way

Wayne Rooney really likes Pep Guardiola a lot.In fact, Rooney said in February that he would love to work for Guardiola as an assistant coach.

Lionel Messi recently made it sound like young players are being asked to play like his old boss did, which means they can only touch the ball twice before passing it to a teammate. Messi thinks this makes them less spontaneous.

The man who makes £378,846 a week has changed football with his ideas about methods and player profiles. Some may think this is good for football, while others may disagree.

Wayne Rooney thought that the signature method Guardiola uses has made players more one-note these days while watching a clip of Jeremy Doku’s bad pass to Romelu Lukaku in the second half of Belgium’s 0-0 draw with Ukraine.

Rooney said on BBC, “What we’re seeing here is this system that everyone seems to be playing. We’re seeing it with Belgium, but also with a lot of teams, like England and Holland at times.”

The former striker said, “Despite having players like [Jeremy] Doku who play wide, no crosses get into the box.” Try to score the perfect goal, I think the game has become a lot more precise.

“I think it’s Pep’s… failure!” That’s what he mentioned. He’s good at it, but everyone else seems to have trouble making clear-cut chances.

too lazy to just blame Guardiola Pep

Finally, critics like Wayne Rooney might not understand that football is cyclical in every way, and it would be unfair to blame anyone, like Guardiola, for the team’s possible fall in any area.

Like, England wasn’t producing as much ability as they are now before the Catalan coach was hired as Manchester City manager in 2016.

There used to be a lot of physically dominant players in English football, but now there are a lot of technically skilled players on the rise, like Phil Foden, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Jude Bellingham.

That might have something to do with Guardiola’s effect on England as a footballing country, but in the end, the examples above show that football goes in cycles.

Nowadays, players may not have as much individual ability as they did in the past.

But that will also change over time, and if Guardiola is to blame for that, then he should also be praised for playing a big part in making football and tactics the best they’ve ever been.