The legendary Barca man criticises the club for bad taste.
Former Barcelona and current Bayern Munich manager Pep Guardiola has hit out at the Catalan club for the way they have acted since the Spaniard left the Nou Camp in 2012.
Guardiola has spent a year out of football since leaving his post at Barca – a club where the 42-year-old won six La Liga titles as a player, three as a manager and also delivered two Champions League triumphs whilst in charge.
Yet despite such a prolonged period of success in Catalonia, the new Bayern boss is unhappy with his former employers.
“I told them [the president and his directors] I was going 6,000km away and asked them to leave me in peace, but they haven’t kept their word,” Guardiola was quoted on ESPN.
“I did my time [at Barcelona] then decided to leave.
“Too many things have happened that have crossed the line.
“I will never forget that they used Tito’s illness to cause me damage, because it’s a lie that I never saw him in New York.
“If any of the things I’ve said is not true, come out and rebut it, but it has to be them [Rosell and the board], not intermediaries or Barcelona messengers. Them.
“I just ask the board to go their own way and leave me alone and stop using me and my friends to hurt me.”
The current Barca boss and former assistant of Guardiola, Vilanova, was forced to take time away from the team during his first season in charge after being diagnosed with cancer.
The 44-year-old traveled to New York for treatment – the city where the manager’s predecessor had chosen to take his year’s sabbatical to learn German before taking over at the Allianz Arena – and it was claimed Guardiola did not visit his former colleague.
It seems that relations between the Bayern boss and the Barca hierarchy have truly broken down and could make any possible Champions League meetings next season all the more tense.
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