Pep Guardiola insisted that footballers need regular sex to play at their best — despite Samir Nasri’s claims of a late-night nookie ban at Manchester City.
Nasri said earlier this week that City boss Guardiola had banned his stars from having sex after midnight in a move designed to avoid muscle injuries.
But a laughing Guardiola said: ‘It’s impossible to play good football if you don’t have sex with your partner. I would never ban that. If you are doing it — better players!’
Guardiola has introduced some tougher guidelines, however, including cutting wifi in certain areas of City’s training base to foster team harmony and insisting on group meal times.
City travel to Crystal Palace this afternoon with just one win from their past five Premier League games and they now sit two points behind leaders Liverpool.
Clean sheets have been hard to come by but Guardiola backed £47.5million defender John Stones after criticism from former England manager Glenn Hoddle.
Hoddle, writing in the Mail on Sunday, said he feared Stones ‘isn’t learning’ and that Guardiola may be over-indulging him.
But the Catalan compared the 22-year-old to Barcelona’s Gerard Pique and said he expected him to become one of Europe’s dominant central defenders.
‘It’s difficult for me to find at that age, one player with this personality,’ Guardiola said. ‘Sometimes you have to help him understand when he can do some things and in some other moments he cannot.
‘The basics, the principles, the qualities — he’s great. Gerard Pique when he started (at Manchester United) was similar.
‘Gerard started playing not so often, but in time he grew stronger. It doesn’t happen in one day or one month — (Stones) needs time.
‘He’s 22 and that’s what is so nice about my job — to help him develop.’
City captain Vincent Kompany is ready to feature at Palace after pulling out of Belgium’s friendly against Holland last week.
Guardiola said: ‘We are working on him being free in his mind, the muscular issue is much better. We are working on recovering the best Vincent possible.’
Daily Mail