Pep Guardiola believes Erling Haaland has a starvation for objectives like Lionel Messi’s, even though Manchester City’s supervisor instructed warning when evaluating the striker to arguably the best participant ever.
Haaland’s penalty in Sunday’s 2–1 victory at Fulham took the Norwegian to 50 objectives for the season, together with 34 within the Premier League, equaling the contest document set by way of Andy Cole and Alan Shearer. Messi scored 50 or extra membership objectives six occasions in 9 seasons between 2010–19. Guardiola was once the Argentinian’s trainer at Barcelona when Messi scored 73 occasions within the 2011-12 marketing campaign and was once requested whether or not Haaland’s want to attain was once on the similar stage.
“In terms of goals and mentality, yeah,” he stated. “But Messi has done it every season in the last 10-15 years. Erling since he started at Salzburg has got to the same level in terms of goals. It’s almost every game, he scores a goal.
“One or two every game, he had the chances to do it, but Messi is the most complete player I have seen in terms of vision, dribbles, passes, competitiveness, in many things that are difficult. Hopefully Erling can be so close [to] Leo – that would be great for us and him.”
City have six league matches remaining, the first of which is West Ham’s visit to the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday. Guardiola was asked what his priority is when instructing his players during the run-in.
“My main role I think is telling them that if you’re tired, you’re wrong,” he stated. “You aren’t drained. When you’re successful video games, I felt it as a participant – and at Barcelona and Bayern Munich as a supervisor who’s dreaming of ‘successful the identify’ – [the players] really feel the similar.
“Now it’s a question of sleep and sleep and sleep. Eat a lot and drink – water, not another type of drink. Water, water, water. Take a lot of naps after lunchtime, better regeneration and use all your energy in the moment of the game.”
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