Praise for Aké before duel with Feyenoord: ‘I adore him as a person and as a player’ | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola is still very happy with Nathan Aké in his team. Ahead of the match against Feyenoord, the coach called the Dutchman a wonderful person and competitive player.

Guardiola described Aké on Ziggo Sport with compliments surrounding the defender’s character. “As a manager, you want to look for the person behind a player as well as the players. I have that with Nathan. I am extremely happy with him. I don’t think you can ever find a single teammate of his who has anything bad to say about him. Both at his clubs and with the Dutch national team.”

The Spanish boss is also just as impressed as those aforementioned players. While he does think that the defender is injured a bit too often, he understands that that can’t be helped most of the time.

“He’s very competitive and I wish he could play a season without injuries, but sometimes you run into those kinds of things. I adore him as a person and as a player.”

Guardiola provided further, broader comments previewing the fixture with Feyenoord. (Via BBC Sport) He said City “will have to adapt” given their injury list if they want to start scoring more but disagreed with the argument that his side are getting too old to perform at a top level.

Furthermore, on turning current form around against the Rotterdammers:

“Our standards have to continue to be there – but they can also drop. Tell me of one team whose haven’t after what we have done for many, many years? There’s a lot of minimal factors that are the reason. If it was one reason I would take it, but it’s not as simple.”

Speaking more about his side’s fall from recent standards, where the Cityzens have lost five games in a row for the first time under Pep, the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss commented defiantly:

“I have the feeling that this season we will do very good things. I don’t give up and I have the feeling we will be there. I think we deserve some patience when we lose games. You are defending a legacy and that is difficult to handle.”

GBeNeFN | Max Bradfield