Kalvin Phillips has revealed he was left frustrated over Pep Guardiola’s remarks about his weight during his time at Manchester City.
The 28-year-old midfielder joined Ipswich Town on a season-long loan from City this summer, having spent the second half of last season on loan at West Ham United.
In December 2022, Guardiola said that the England international had returned to City from the World Cup in Qatar “overweight” and was not “in the best condition to train and play”. Last summer, Phillips admitted that he had found the City manager’s comments “a little hard to take”.
Following his temporary move to West Ham in the January transfer window, Guardiola issued an apology to Phillips for his remarks, admitting it was a mistake.
Phillips started just two Premier League matches for Guardiola’s City (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
Speaking on BBC Sport’s My Mate’s a Footballer podcast, Phillips spoke of enjoying his time at Ipswich but opened up on the impact of Guardiola’s comments.
“That narrative on social media just grew and grew,” Phillips said.
“Every club that I’d go to, I spoke to, like the manager and the nutritionist and stuff like that, they’d always speak about weight before they’d say anything else. And it got to the point where it peed me off a little bit. I was getting quite frustrated with it.
“At Ipswich, the manager (Kieran McKenna) is an unbelievable person as well as a manager and he spoke about all the past in my career and told me he just wanted me to get to where I was at Leeds.”
Phillips, whose most recent England cap came in November 2023, has featured in four matches for Ipswich this campaign, having made just 31 appearances for City since joining in 2022.
(Top photo: Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
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