Pep Guardiola dismisses Jude Bellingham controversy: ‘I’ve never understood f— off or f— you’

One of the biggest matches of the season is ahead of Real Madrid and Manchester City, but in Spain the Champions League itself plays the second violin to a different subject. Jude Bellingham told a referee for “f-off”. Or maybe he said, “F — You.” Is which of those he said is important? Does it tell either a potentially long -term ban? And above all, there is a difference between these two sentences in English, which means that Bellingham should not have received a red card.

Bellingham, the match winner when Madrid and City met on Tuesday in England, saw Red on Saturday for whatever it was, he told referee Jose Luis Munuera Montero in the 39th minute of the 1-1 draw with Osasuna. The player insisted that he had released an annoyed cry from “F — off”. Montero said he heard the whole more personalized “f — you”. Carlo Ancelotti supported his husband and rejects the incident as a misunderstanding. Barcelona boss Hansi Flick Branded Bellingham ‘disrespectful’. Spanish media dived in the lead in a debate about semantics.

Returning from Manchester to his home country, Pep Guardiola, in England as head coach of the city, seemed just as well qualified as everyone else to judge. He is just as at ease his press conferences in English as he is Spanish. Can he shed the whole situation light? Unfortunately not.

“My English is good, but I never understood ‘f- off’ or ‘f — you’, so give me a little more time in England, so I might understand more.

‘You should ask Jude [Bellingham] What his intention was: F — You, or F — AF-that is what really matters. Maybe you can attack someone with a big smile on your face, and that wouldn’t be so bad, right? “

Regarding suggestions that Montero should experience an investigation, Guardiola was even more open. “Leave him alone. Leave him alone. It’s the best we can do,” he said.

Such an intervention seems unlikely that the Bellingham debate or the wider referee of Madrid games are suppressing what it plays in. The leaders of La Liga-Die have received eight fines than this season against them was given earlier this month formally at the Spanish football club after a 1-0 defeat against Osasuna. In that match, the winner was scored by Carlos Romero, who, according to Madrid, should have already been sent for a bad tackle on Kylian Mbappe. A fine allocated to Atletico in the Spanish capital Derby A week later did little to improve their mood.

Ancelotti, normally a man who could extinguish social media with his cool, was not afraid of firing a shot about the arches of La Liga officials. Asked if he expected a better referee performance in the Champions League, where the Hungarian Istvan Kovacs will lead the crew, said the Real Madrid manager: “The statistics speak for themselves. There are fewer varentives, only when needed.

“What happens is quite surprising and I have nothing else to say. We are clearly not happy with it, with what happened with Osasuna, what happened to Atletico. It has been three games where we received damage by some Decisions that we still don’t do I don’t understand. “

Guardiola sees no reason for concern about whether the very active discourse around the referee of Madrid will influence the game, and insists that he is discussing the officials with his players “rarely, rarely, rarely”. Instead, he is aimed at destroying a 3-2 deficiency, because the city seem to be only the third of the 40 teams that loses a match in the first pipes at home to Madrid and still continues to the next round of the European competition.

“The pressure is there,” he said, “but it is more than welcome; you can’t perform well without pressure. [Whether we win] Depends on how we play, how we deal with the moments in one of the largest stadiums. The bad moments you have to suffer will be there and we will try to reduce them as much as possible.

‘You have to play an almost perfect game. The result was not so good [in the first leg]We usually come in the second stage with a better result, so it’s not the perfect situation. We have to attack, we have to score goals. We want to win, so let’s see if we can adjust some things that did not work in the first stage. “