Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola responds to Fabio Capello after latter called him 'arrogant'

Pep Guardiola has chosen not to hit back at Fabio Capello after his comments on the Manchester City manager. The Spaniard admitted he had heard the comments and stated that it was not the first time the Italian manager made such statements.

Speaking to the media ahead of Manchester City's clash with Brighton & Hove Albion, Guardiola took a cheeky dig at Italian football. The Spaniard tactician stated that he was not good enough to ruin the sport in the country while playing for AS Roma.

Guardiola said:

"I listen to everything that people say about me, so be careful. This isn’t the first time Mr. Fabio Capello has said something like this. But I’m not good enough to ruin Italian football. Italian football is far bigger than the way we play. A big hug for Fabio, a big hug."

Pep Guardiola played one season at AS Roma before moving back to Brescia, the club he had joined after leaving Barcelona in 2001. The Spaniard played for Al Ahli and Doradoes before calling it quits in his playing career.

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What did Fabio Capello say about Pep Guardiola?

Fabio Capello was talking to El Mundo this week and claimed that Pep Guardiola had done more harm to football than good. He believed that the manager won the UEFA Champions League with Manchester City in the only season he did not try anything out of the box.

Capello said via GOAL:

"You know what I don’t like about Guardiola? His arrogance. The Champions League he won with City is the only one where he didn’t try anything funny in the decisive matches. But all the other years, in Manchester and Munich, on key days, he always wanted to be the protagonist. He would change things and invent them so he could say: ‘It’s not the players who win, it’s me’. And that arrogance cost him several Champions Leagues. I respect him, but for me, it’s clear."

"Besides, even if it is no longer his fault, he has done a lot of harm to football. Because everyone spent ten years trying to copy him. It ruined Italian football, which lost its nature. I said: 'Stop, you don't have Guardiola's players'! There was also the absurd idea that that was all there was to do to play well. A disaster and also a boredom that made many people flee from football, they only have to watch the highlights, why are you going to watch 90 minutes of passes and horizontal passes without fighting," he added.

Fabio Capello was clear that he did not like Pep Guardiola's tactics and believed that players needed to run and not jog around the way the Spaniard wanted them to do.