Guardiola, insists “there’s still a long way to go”
Vanessa Forns
The boss was clearly happy with his team’s hard won win at the always difficult Sporting Gijon ground, though he insisted that although the win gave his team top spot in the table “there’s still a long way to go”.
Guardiola revealed that the squad were “very satisfied” with the result against
Sporting and stressed the importance of taking the points from such tough games- “you really
have to fight for these points”, whilst not letting the team’s top spot take on too
much weight- “there’s still a long way to go”.
Hard to win at Molinón
Guardiola praised Sporting, who always seem to make things tough for Barça:
“we were up against a very good Sporting side, who put a lot of men behind the ball, sticking
together and leaving very little space. It’s always hard to win here, Sporting have some very
proud and young players and really fight. What’s more, we came into the game after a long
trip and this is a very difficult ground to win at. Even so, they had very few chances to
score”.
The boss also referred to Sporting manager Manuel Preciado: “you just have to see how
his team behaves. I believe you always have to look at the players and I can see their enthusiasm
which is always a sign that they are with the manager. This team is alive and Manolo knows better
than anybody how to manage these situations. It doesn’t matter where he is, you can always
recognise his teams. Any big team coming here will have to fight really hard”.
“Messi never dives”
Guardiola was also quizzed about the possible penalty committed by De las Cuevas on
Messi and although he admitted he didn’t have a clear view of the incident, he insisted:
“everybody should know that if Leo is on the ground, it’s never because he’s
dived. He never cheats and he never dives”.