Poch apologises to Pep, officials for outburst

Mauricio Pochettino has apologised to Pep Guardiola and the match officials after his furious outburst at the end of Chelsea‘s 4-4 draw with Manchester City at Stamford Bridge.

The Chelsea boss strode onto the pitch at full-time to argue with referee Anthony Taylor about stopping the game when Chelsea were searching for a match-winning fifth goal.

– Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, more (U.S.)

Pochettino failed to shake hands with City manager Guardiola and was booked for remonstrating with Taylor, before being dragged away by two staff members at the end of a pulsating encounter in which his team salvaged a draw through Cole Palmer‘s 95th-minute penalty.

“I need to apologise to Anthony [Taylor] and the officials,” said Pochettino. “In this moment, I feel Raheem [Sterling] can go through to score the fifth. In this moment when we finish the game, I turn to Anthony and say ‘What the, you know, is going on? Why stop in this moment the action?’

“Then, I turned and said ‘I deserve to be booked’ because yes, I crossed the limit. I want to apologise because it is not a good image for me and for football, this type of behaviour.”

Pushed on ignoring Guardiola at full time, Pochettino said: “I want to apologise to him also. In this moment, I didn’t see him. I was only focused on the action. So I want to apologise to Pep also.”

Guardiola played down the incident when asked. “No problem,” he said. “It is not a problem. I don’t want to talk about that, it is fine. Everyone with the emotions, it happened to me sometimes. It’s fine, honestly. I don’t want you to misunderstand me, in the past it happened with Pochettino but its fine. Completely, completely fine.”

Erling Haaland‘s 25th-minute penalty gave City the lead before Thiago Silva and Sterling struck for the hosts. Manuel Akanji equalised for City in first-half stoppage time and then Haaland bundled the ball home from close range to give the visitors a 3-2 lead on 47 minutes.

Nicolas Jackson equalised again with 67 minutes played before Rodri‘s deflected 86th-minute strike appeared to give City all three points. But Rúben Dias fouled Armando Broja in the box and Palmer converted the resulting penalty against his former club.

City are a point clear at the top of the Premier League heading into the international break which Chelsea sit in tenth place on 16 points.