Guardiola reveals Hart snub was biggest Man City regret

Pep Guardiola, on the eve of his final match as Manchester City manager, has identified not giving goalkeeper Joe Hart a chance to prove himself as his most significant regret during his 10-year tenure.

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I want to confess, I have regrets. When you take a lot of decisions, a lot, lot of decisions, you make mistakes. But there is one regret that I have deep inside for many years, that I didn’t give a chance to Joe Hart to be with me to prove himself how good a keeper he was.

Guardiola is set to depart Manchester City after a highly successful decade, during which he secured 20 trophies, including six Premier League titles and the club's first Champions League crown. Despite this remarkable success, he harbors one major regret concerning his time at the Etihad Stadium.

Early in his tenure, Guardiola sent Hart, then an England regular, out on loan to Torino before signing Claudio Bravo and later Ederson. Hart had reportedly asked Guardiola for an opportunity to demonstrate his ability to meet the manager's requirements for a goalkeeper capable of initiating attacks through distribution.

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I should have done, not because… all respect for Claudio, all respect for Ede who came in, they were important, but in that moment, I could have said, ‘Okay Joe, let’s try to do it together. If it doesn’t work, okay, we’ll change it’.

"I want to confess, I have regrets. When you take a lot of decisions, a lot, lot of decisions, you make mistakes," Guardiola told Sky Sports. "But there is one regret that I have deep inside for many years, that I didn’t give a chance to Joe Hart to be with me to prove himself how good a keeper he was."

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Maybe with time then and learning. But I regret it from that time. In that moment, I said, ‘I believe in that’. Always I am stubborn in my decisions when I believe in that.

Guardiola reflected that he could have given Hart a chance to work together, acknowledging that life involves difficult decisions and that sometimes fairness is compromised. He added that he has learned from the experience of dealing with Hart, who was reportedly furious at the time of the decision. The manager admitted that he can be stubborn when he believes in a decision but emphasized that dealing with human emotions is one of the most challenging aspects of management.

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If in that I failed, I do apologise, but it never, never was my intention or the intention of the club.