‘It talks more’ – Rodri interview on leadership and rivals as he targets Man City history

Rodri speaks to the Manchester Evening News about becoming an integral part of the Manchester City team looking to win an historic Treble

While he has a growing stable of emerging managers to have played under him, Pep Guardiola may be responsible for convincing Rodri NOT to go into coaching.

The Manchester City midfielder, who has combined a professional football career with a business degree, has felt for a while he had an eye for spotting talent but has been convinced further to become a sporting director after witnessing Guardiola close up. “I see Txiki [Begiristain] and I think what a good life this guy has!” laughed the midfielder.

“I see Pep so stressed going here and there, talking to the players, I see Txiki and he is the most important part of this. He decides who is coming in, what is good for the team. In modern football, I think sporting directors are so important – key for me.”

If it would be a surprise to see such a strong disciple of Guardiola’s football ignore coaching after his playing days, teammates, fans, and opposition alike have become used to Rodri being one step ahead. After a chastening first year at the Etihad spent running backwards chasing the ball, the Spaniard has improved incrementally each season and has now mastered his own spin on the Fernandinho role that is the fulcrum of success in the manager’s set-up.

Where Fernandinho’s style earned City a reputation from rivals of tactical fouling for his efforts in breaking up counter-attacks, Rodri has made his mark as a more cultured enforcer despite putting in similar numbers to Fernandinho in terms of tackles. And while many Blues feel he is not talked up highly enough, especially in the conversation around the best holding midfielders around as Casemiro has earned praise for transforming United, the 27-year-old is intelligent enough to appreciate the difficulty of comparing different styles.

“I want to be the best, that’s my duty every day,” he said. “I try to do the best version of myself.

“I see myself from the first year when I came here to now and I grow a lot. I thought I had good qualities and condition when I came but now I see myself with experience, coaching, what I’ve learned from the opponents. My aim is to be the best but other people have to decide.

“I don’t consider myself the same type of player as other holding midfielders. That’s a good point because you can say this guy is the best but it is so different. I have my own way of understanding and playing that I think it is quite different from Casemiro, Fabinho, [N’golo] Kante and these type of players.”

Such a debate is always going to be heavily influenced by partisan allegiances, and Rodri has become strangely unpopular with rival fans. A popular member of the City squad even if his appeal plummets when he is in charge of the music, his lifestyle choices including no tattoos or social media and a university education have held him up as one of the biggest role models for youngsters to follow – so why has he got such a bad reputation outside the Etihad?

Celebrating in front of Arsenal fans after scoring a last-minute winner was enough for Gunners to turn their ire towards him despite him later apologising, while the decision from officials not to award a penalty at Goodison Park last season when the ball struck his arm in the area is bitterly resented by Liverpool supporters who hold him partially responsible for them not winning the league. It seems a strange contradiction, and while Rodri finds it funny he is also not afraid to lose his nice guy image on the pitch.

“On the pitch sometimes you have to change the mentality. I’m a winner and sometimes when you want to win and if they’re trying to do something you have to do also do that,” he said, clapping his hands together loudly for effect.

“This is part of football but players understand that what happens on the pitch stays on the pitch and this is the good thing. If you asked the City fans they would say the same about Liverpool players or United players.

“It’s good for football, that rivalry. Of course there are times, because football is very euphoric, when you don’t think much but I always try to respect the opponents. I never do these things to disrespect.

“I think I’m a very polite guy. I don’t show much of these kind of things but sometimes things happen.”

If some things on the pitch have always been that way, Rodri has had to learn others at City. As well as developing his positional game in the team, the former Atletico midfielder has become more vocal as he aims to show more leadership in the group towards the end of his fourth year at the club.

As he sat down in a Shanghai hotel for his first major interview with the media as a City player back in 2019, it certainly did not feel like English would hold Rodri back as he spoke impressively in depth about a number of subjects. It has taken time though not just for his language to get to where he wants to be in game situations but also for his views on what his role requires to mature enough for him to add more to his game.

“It’s not easy because I’m Spanish because you don’t have the habit of talking in English the same way I talk in Spanish,” he said. “In my first years I struggled to communicate with my teammates in that way because you cannot speak in the same way to one player as another.

“You have to manage this. I looked at Fernandinho when he did these kind of things.

“I’m trying to improve a lot of things off the pitch – leadership and how to handle big moments – because in eight months of the season there are different moments and maybe you have to grab one guy who is dropping a little bit.

“These kind of things I didn’t think were important before and now I think they are important and massive for the team.”

One such moment came in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Bayern Munich. City could have conceded seconds earlier were it not for a terrific block from Ruben Dias from a Jamal Musiala shot, when Rodri picked the ball up and arced a wonderful shot past Yann Sommer into the back of the net for his first goal in the competition.

The execution and the timing could not have been better, kickstarting a hugely impressive win for Guardiola’s side and showing once again the huge strides made by a player who was dropped from the City team that made the Champions League final in 2021 after too many errors in the big moments. If that wasn’t painful enough, losing to Real Madrid last year after leading by two goals going into the 180th minute of the tie was the toughest of learning curves.

But learn is what Rodri and City have done, and after a 4-1 aggregate win over Bayern in the quarter-finals they are potentially 13 matches away from achieving the Treble – something only United have ever done before in English football. With Sheffield United at Wembley this weekend and a repeat with Real in the Champions League semis, Rodri is determined to seize these moments to take the legacy of this team to the next level.

“I would love this. I would love [it],” he said, answering on the Treble before the question could even be finished.

“Maybe you can spend three years to achieve the FA Cup, the Premier League and the Champions League. But if you do it in one season and you were able to win three with the same team and all those games!? It talks more.

“All 23 players in the squad will all be important if we are to do this. We’re alive in all the competitions, we know we can do this so we’re there. It would be the first time and massive for the club.

“We all want to win but we understand that football can be tricky sometimes and you have to move on. If we’d faced Real Madrid and they beat us in a very normal way and were better it’d be different.

“But we were there and I think much better and deserved to go through but as a matter of life, of maybe not being as experienced, of details, we weren’t there so we want to try again.

“We’ve been in the final, in the semi finals. The level is there so we’re not worried about that.

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“One year it is going to come. But the Champions League is a very tricky competition so we have to take all the details and learn every year.

“Football doesn’t understand about deserving [something]. You have to grab it. 100 per cent we have learned what happened in the last minutes.