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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Rob Smyth

Pep Guardiola and Manchester City’s love-hate-need Big Cup relationship

Pep Guardiola Manchester City Big Cup Chelsea Xherdan Shaqiri Frank Lampard Football Football Daily Allan Clark Bayern Munich
Pep Guardiola
Managing expectations: Pep Guardiola continues his quest for a first Big Cup since 2011. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

PEP TALK

Triumph and disaster. That’s how Kipling described “life’s two impostors” in the most quoted line from If, his paean to equanimity. But sod him, because a) it says here he’s been cancelled and b) he died in 1936 and therefore knows the square root of bugger all about Big Cup. Goodbye triumph and disaster, hello “visionary genius and bald fraud”. Those are the impostors Pep Guardiola will be wrestling with in the next few weeks as he tries to finally win Big Cup with Manchester City, a journey (drink two fingers) that resumes against Bayern Munich at the Etihad tonight.

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