Premier League
Guardiola: ‘I thank everyone in Goodison for supporting Zinchenko’
Manchester City’s Ukraine left-back Oleksandr Zinchensko was greeted by Everton’s friends at Goodison Park and Pep Guardiola hastened to tip his hat to the candy crowd for their behaviour.
The war in Ukraine has been raging since the Russian invasion in the early hours of Thursday, and the planet as a whole is trying in every possible way to show its solidarity with troubled Ukrainians and its disapproval of Putin’s authoritarian behavior.
In this context, what took place on the grass at Goodison Park on Saturday evening (26/2) was extremely moving as both the Everton and Manchester City players, with the flags they held and the t-shirts they stopped, Mikolenko and Zinchenko were applauded.
Goodison’s crowd’s applause for Zinchenko gains even more weight given that he was not a player of their team like Mikolenko, and Pep Guardiola made statements praising Everton fans immediately after the game.
“A big thank you to the people who were at Goodison Park. It was so touching. These are difficult times for Zinchenko and the people of Ukraine.
The people at Goodison were incredible.”said Guardiola, eloquently responding to the controversial period with Rodri’s outstretched hand in 84′ when his team was not awarded a penalty:
“There was an offside. The phase was reviewed by the VAR and it was given offside. I didn’t see the phase. If you didn’t see it was given offside (ss said to the reporter who interviewed him), then the Positions further down the field were not good.”
I am a sports writer and journalist who has written for various online publications including Sportish. I’m originally from the UK but currently live in Toronto, Canada. I’m also an author on Sportish and have written several articles on a variety of sports-related topics.