Gabriel Jesus got his feet wet with Arsenal last season scoring 11 goals in 33 games. It was his first season away from Manchester City where the 26-year-old spent six seasons and won 11 championships.
The Olympic gold medalist spoke to former FC Dallas DP flop Denilson on his podcast, ‘Denilson Show’ where he gave the reason as to when he decided to leave Manchester City. It all came down to a decision that Pep Guardiola made.
When the obsessive coach made that decision, Gabriel Jesus was driven to tears, and it was the “last straw” and the talented forward knew it was time for a change of scenery.
Pep Guardiola made Gabriel Jesus cry
Speaking to Denilson the Arsenal forward stated, “There was a Champions League game, PSG, at home, in which he put [Oleksandr] Zinchenko as a false 9. Crazy thing,” Jesus said. “The day before, he didn’t even use him [Zinchenko] in training, he had put me in as a striker… Zinchenko even joked with me: ‘that day I felt bad for you.’
“Two hours before the game, there’s a team talk, the team eats, rests for 30 minutes and goes to the game. He told us the team… I didn’t even eat. I went straight to the room, crying, I called my mother to talk: ‘I want to leave.’ I’m going home, because he put him [Zinchenko] on, and he didn’t put me on. He put a left-back there. I went crazy.”
“I didn’t warm up,” Jesus added. “I felt bad. Five minutes after [Kylian] Mbappe scored the goal for 1-0, he [Guardiola] called me. I gave an assist and scored; we turned it around 2-1. In the next [Champions League] game [a 2-1 win at RB Leipzig], I thought I was going to play, and I didn’t play.
“There was a lot of that with him [Guardiola], and it’s not easy. But one [player] evolves. It is really hard. That’s when I decided, I didn’t want to stay anymore. And I decided to leave.”
