Pep Guardiola has been welcoming his Manchester City players back from the World Cup at staggered times, depending on how far their respective countries went in the 2022 tournament. He needs to manage their minutes based on their workload in Qatar and rested a number of players in midweek.
In Thursday’s EFL Cup win over Liverpool, Ederson, Ruben Dias, Kalvin Phillips and Julian Alvarez were left out of the matchday squad, Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo were unused substitutes, and Bernardo Silva, Jack Grealish and Phil Foden were given cameos from the bench – nine players not starting.
Aymeric Laporte, Manuel Akanji, Nathan Ake, Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan and Rodri all got the nod and should feature against Leeds United on Wednesday, but Chris Sutton noted how many minutes Guardiola’s men played in the World Cup compared to their rivals.
He wrote in his Daily Mail column: “Manchester City’s outfield players appeared for 4,538 minutes at this World Cup. Liverpool’s appeared for 1,409 minutes by comparison.”
City had 16 first-team players at the World Cup who were all regulars for their national teams, except for Ederson, so they played heavily in the group stages and latter stages.
Only Alvarez made it to the semi-finals, however, and he ended up winning the tournament with Argentina, so the majority of players have at least been afforded more than a week to rest. Whether that’s enough time to recover remains to be seen, however.
Riyad Mahrez and Erling Haaland are the notable names that didn’t feature at the World Cup, so they’ll be raring to go, especially after scoring against Liverpool. But will the massive amount of minutes in Qatar hamper City in the title race? They’re already adrift of Arsenal.
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