Pep Guardiola includes a new Manchester City player in his Premier League roster ahead of Sunday’s match against Tottenham
Joao Cancelo’s loan move to Bayern Munich left a hole on Manchester City’s Premier League roster, thus Pep Guardiola selected Maximo Perrone to fill it. Highly regarded, the 20-year-old was acquired in January from CA Velez Sarsfield on a five-year contract.
Perrone is a defensive midfielder who made 33 appearances for his former club in all competitions, scoring three goals and registering two assists. He has represented Argentina at the U20 level and just turned 20 weeks ago, so his future appears promising.
Guardiola is set to start Rodri over Perrone and Kalvin Phillips against Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday afternoon, but Pep Guardiola may give the Argentine an opportunity if he is retained.
City re-loaned Julian Alvarez to River Plate after acquiring him in January 2022, but elected not to do so with Perrone. Pep must have believed his growth would be best served at Manchester, therefore it would be remarkable if he did not play in the coming weeks and months.
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Guardiola has not given his young players as much playing time as he did last season, but it looks that Perrone was signed to have a greater effect than playing in the reserves or sitting on the bench.
Dejan Kulusevski, a winger for Tottenham, has said that’revenge’ has motivated him throughout his first year with the club. In January of last year, the 22-year-old made the move to north London alongside his former Juventus teammate Rodrigo Bentancur.
The double trade was first met with skepticism, as neither player was particularly outstanding in Serie A. However, they have since become two of Tottenham’s most important players, and the roughly £50 million spent on them now appears like a bargain.
Speaking prior to his team’s match against Manchester City on Sunday, Kulusevski revealed that he enjoyed proving his naysayers wrong and was using it as motivation to continue his excellent Premier League run. The Swede stated, “That’s how you want to be as a person: when you enter a room, you want to shift the vibe and contribute something to the table.”
“That’s what I try to do and that’s what Rodrigo did. I had a lot of revenge in my head. From Juventus. In the last few months, I didn’t play so much. A lot of anger. I didn’t like where my football was going. So, it was just revenge for that. That’s all I wanted…to show people what I could do, so I came here.”
Spurs will hope that Sunday’s match against City is more like last year’s 3-2 victory at the Etihad and less like the 4-2 loss at the same venue a few weeks ago. Kulusevski has scored in both of his appearances against City for Spurs.
“In all the big games this season, we haven’t been good enough,” he added. “We have lost them. That’s why we are fifth. It’s important we get this win. We were close a couple of weeks ago at City. We played an amazing first-half but not in the second. The time to push on is now.”
Spurs manager Antonio Conte will be absent from the sidelines as he recovers from surgery to remove his gallbladder. Conte has experienced a difficult season off the field due to a health crisis and the passing of three close friends: fitness coach Gian Piero Ventrone, former players Sinisa Mihajlovic and Gianluca Vialli.
