One event signalled his end at Manchester City
Gabriel Jesus has opened up on the moment he knew it was time to leave Manchester City.
Jesus swapped for the north west for north London after joining Arsenal last summer where he narrowly missed out on winning the Premier League – being beaten to it by his former employers.
During his six years at the Etihad Stadium Jesus often found himself in and out of the starting XI, usually playing second fiddle to Sergio Aguero however there was one game that made him realise his future was elsewhere.
After being left on the bench for City’s game against Paris Saint-Germain as Pep Guardiola opted to start Oleksandr Zinchenko – now a teammate of his at Arsenal – which left him so angry he was reduced to tears.
Speaking on the Denilson Show podcast : “There was a Champions League game, PSG, at home in which he put Zinchenko as a false 9. Crazy thing. The day before, he didn’t even use him in training, he had put me in as a striker.. Zinchenko even joked with me: ‘That day I felt bad or you’.
“Two hours before the game, there’s a team talk, the team eats, rests for 30 minutes and goes to the game… I didn’t even eat. I went straight to the room, crying, I called my mother to talk: ‘I want to leave’. I’m going home, because he put (Zinchenko) on. He put a left-back there. I went crazy.”
Despite coming off the bench to score the winning goal that night, Jesus admitted that he wasn’t even going to warm up until Guardiola told him he would be coming on.
He added: “Five minutes after Mbappe scored the goal for 1-0, [Guardiola] called me. I gave an assist and scored; we turned it around 2-1. In the next [Champions League] game [a 2-1 win at RB Leipzig], I thought I was going to play, and I didn’t play.
“There was a lot of that with him [Guardiola], and it’s not easy. But one [player] evolves. It is really hard. That’s when I decided, I didn’t want to stay anymore. And I decided to leave.”
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