Pepe on Rafael Leão's red card against Chile 🗣️ “I'm not going to sit here and pretend it wasn't a mistake. It was. At this level, especially before a World Cup, you cannot lose control like that. Rafael knows it. The team knows it. The coaching staff knows it. But what disappoints me is not the red card itself. It's that a player with his talent still givesw opponents opportunities to take him out of the game mentally. The best players know how to suffer, how to stay calm and how to punish teams with football instead of emotions. Because when you're one of Portugal's biggest weapons, every opponent wants a reaction from you. Rafael has everything needed to be one of the stars of this World Cup. The question is whether he can control himself long enough to show it.”Pep Guardiola: “What is Barça missing to win the Champions League? The Champions League is a competition that DESTROYS projects, and I hope that’s not the case at Barça”. “We must not think that just because you don’t win it, everything that has been built is no good. The league is the competition that gives you consistency and continuity. In the Champions League, you need to reach the decisive stages in good condition, without injuries, and refereeing also has a huge impact”. “What matters is that the daily work is excellent, that the team keeps growing and improving, and that they don’t believe the season is a failure just because they don’t reach the Champions League final or win it. The league is what sets the foundation for judging whether a season has been good or not”.
