\n<\/p>\n
Pep Guardiola hailed Erling Haaland\u2019s 50th Champions League goal in a record 49 games and stated he is now in the company of the \u201cmonsters Cristiano and Messi\u201d in the competition\u2019s all-time greatest scorers, as Manchester City beat Napoli 2-0 in the opening group match.<\/p>\n
Haaland\u2019s 56th-minute opener was his 12th in seven appearances for City and Norway, J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku\u2019s second clinching victory for Guardiola\u2019s side. Haaland beat Ruud van Nistelrooy\u2019s previous 62-appearance mark for 50 goals.<\/p>\n
His manager said: \u201cWhat can I say? The numbers speak for themselves. We are lucky to have him. Just to congratulate him, because he\u2019s alongside goalscorers like Van Nistelrooy, Lewandowski, but especially the two monsters Cristiano and Messi for 20 years: for Erling to be there is unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola was asked if Haaland might beat Ronaldo\u2019s record tally of 140 Champions League goals. \u201cIn that rhythm, yeah,\u201d the Catalan said. \u201cHe\u2019s not injured, he could play for 10 or 12 more years, and if he maintains this progression \u2013 absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola believes Haaland is better this season. \u201cYeah. It\u2019s a question of playing a lot, experience, [be involved in] more important games and his mentality as well,\u201d said the 54-year-old.<\/p>\n
Phil Foden\u2019s chip created Haaland\u2019s strike against Napoli, the No 47 having also scored in Sunday\u2019s 3-0 win over Manchester United. \u201cThe last two games have been the Phil that we know,\u201d said Guardiola. \u201cWhen he plays close to Erling in the year we won the fourth Premier League in a row Phil was the best player in the Premier League. We are so happy because I know he is happy and his joy and his life is fine, the rest is natural. His incredible talent comes along.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antonio Conte explained why he substituted Kevin De Bruyne when his captain, Giovanni Di Lorenzo, was sent off on 21 minutes. \u201cIt was the only option I could do,\u201d said the head coach. \u201cI was really sorry for him as it\u2019s the game against his old team but Kevin understood very well. I had only this decision, this option.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Football Daily<\/span><\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Conte was pleased the loss was not heavier. \u201cThey could have pulled our pants down but they did not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pep Guardiola hailed Erling Haaland\u2019s 50th Champions League goal in a record 49 games and stated he is now in the company of the \u201cmonsters Cristiano and Messi\u201d in the competition\u2019s all-time greatest scorers, as Manchester City beat Napoli 2-0 in the opening group match. Haaland\u2019s 56th-minute opener was his 12th in seven appearances for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1732,339,13678,7201,13677,3504,1923,10579,7369],"class_list":{"0":"post-22294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-champions","9":"tag-club","10":"tag-erling","11":"tag-guardiola","12":"tag-haaland","13":"tag-league","14":"tag-messi","15":"tag-monsters","16":"tag-ronaldo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}