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.
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 it’s 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.