Manchester City’s FA Cup match at Swindon Town is going ahead on Friday despite the fact 21 members of their first-team bubble are currently isolating for Covid-19 related reasons.
The club confirmed both head coach Pep Guardiola and assistant Juanma Lillo tested positive for Covid, with “a number of other positive cases” also recorded in the camp.
Seven first-team players are isolating along with 14 backroom staff members, but the outbreak has not led to a postponement of their third-round match at County Ground on Friday night.
With Guardiola and Lillo both absent, it will be assistant coach Rodolfo Borrell taking charge of City’s trip to Swindon.
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Borrell joined City in 2014, initially as the club’s global technical director, having previously worked at Barcelona and Liverpool.
He was at Barcelona from 1995 to 2008, and is credited for being Lionel Messi’s first coach at the club.
Messi left Argentina and joined Barcelona’s La Masia academy as a 13-year-old in 2000, and as well as coaching the now seven-time Ballon d’Or winner, Borrell also worked with other stars including Cesc Fabregas, Andres Iniesta and Gerard Pique.
In 2009 he was brought to Liverpool by Rafael Benitez, first working with the Under-18s, then Under-21s, before accepting the technical director role in 2012.
Borrell oversaw Raheem Sterling’s progression from academy to the first team. The England forward left QPR for Liverpool in 2010, and made his senior debut in March 2012 aged 17.
An academy overhaul saw both Borrell and Frank McParland dismissed in November 2013, and four months later the former joined City.
Borrell eventually became a first-team assistant coach under Guardiola, who took charge of City in 2016, and worked with Mikel Arteta among others.
Following Arteta’s decision to join Arsenal in 2019, Borrell was linked with following his fellow Spaniard to the Emirates, but Guardiola said there had been no approach when ruling out the move.
Borrell also reportedly held talks with DC United in 2020, but a move didn’t come to fruition, and Guardiola went on to praise his assistant last year as City edged closer to winning the Premier League title.
“I love my job and am fortunate to do it but sometimes you can’t take a break and analyse what’s going on,” Guardiola said in April 2021. “That’s why my backroom staff today, my assistants like Rodolfo (Borrell), Juanma (Lillo), were so important.
“Because sometimes they are more cold to analyse what is going to happen, and even in the bad moments, Juanma and Rodolfo say: ‘We are going in a good direction’.
“When you play every three days you can’t see everything clearly, because with travel and organising the team, whatever, this is the most difficult thing when you play a lot of games.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/32Ttom4
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