Pep Guardiola has revealed that not giving Joe Hart a chance in the side is his biggest regret from his decade at Manchester City.
It was confirmed on Friday morning that Guardiola would step down from his post at the end of this season, with Sunday’s match against Aston Villa set to be the last of his decorated decade at the Etihad.
On signing with the club in 2016, though, one of the first decisions he made was to drop Hart off the back of a poor Euros campaign, instead favouring Claudio Bravo and Willy Caballero.
Hart ended up spending the 2016-17 campaign on loan in Serie A with Torino and the following season with West Ham, before joining Burnley on a permanent deal in 2018.
And Guardiola has now revealed he regrets his treatment of Hart more than anything else he did in ten years at City’s helm.
“I want to confess something,” he began, speaking in an interview with Sky Sports. “I have regrets. When you take a lot of decisions, you make mistakes.
“There is one regret I have deep inside for many years: I don’t give the chance to Joe Hart to prove himself, how good a keeper he was, you know?
“And I should have done. All respect for Claudio [Bravo], respect for Ederson, when he came in he was important. But in that moment I should have said ‘OK Joe, let’s try to do it together and if it doesn’t work then OK, we change it’. But it happened.”
He went on: “Sometimes I am not fair enough.
“I regret it for the time. In that moment, I am always stubborn in my decisions, when I believe in that. When I have doubts, I talk with people, but I was sure 100 per cent that we have to do it that way. The club supported me with that.”
Guardiola plans to take some time away from management after leaving City. Describing his next steps on Friday, he said: “Rest, no plans to train [as a manager] for a while. Otherwise I would be here!”
He will, however, take on a role in the club’s foundation after calling time on his managerial tenure.