Pep Guardiola’s ‘overweight’ comments on Kalvin Phillips created long-lasting problems in transfer talks | OneFootball

Manchester City’s on-loan midfielder Kalvin Phillips has revealed this week that Pep Guardiola’s comments surrounding his weight caused problems in transfer talks.

The former Leeds United midfielder has often struggled for consistent game time during his association with Manchester City, and since the January market of 2024, has been seeking loan routes to try and regain form, fitness, and consistency at the very top of the game.

A loan move to West Ham was largely flawed and failed to see the return to the standards expected during a six-month period at the end of last season, whilst the ongoing campaign has seen faith put back into the player by Ipswich’s Kieran McKenna.

But Kalvin Phillips has struggled to shake off particular comments from his City manager, as Pep Guardiola openly spoke about Phillips’ weight following the 2022 FIFA World Cup and the Englishman’s return to the City Football Academy following the club football break.

Speaking at the end of December 2022, Guardiola said on Phillips, “He’s not injured – he arrived [back at Manchester City] overweight. I don’t know [why]. He didn’t arrive in the condition to do training sessions and to play.”

Now commenting this week during an appearance on BBC Sounds’ ‘My Mate’s A Footballer’ podcast, Phillips has spoken at length about the effect Guardiola’s comments regarding his weight had on him at the time and in future transfer discussions with potential suitors.

“I think that narrative on social media just kind of grew and grew,” Phillips claimed. “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.”

The 28-year-old continued, “And it got to the point where it peed me off a little bit. I was getting quite frustrated with it, but then now I’ve come to Ipswich like the manager’s an unbelievable person as well as a manager.

“He [Kieran McKenna] said, ‘I’m big on body composition and I just want you to get to where you was when you left Leeds or when you was at Leeds’. I think that’ll give us a good starting point for you to push on and hopefully get to back, back to where you was.”

Pep Guardiola has since gone on to apologise for the comments frequently when quizzed on the matter in press conferences, stating in February, “Yeah, I’m sorry… Yeah, I’m sorry! Once in eight years is not bad, but I’m so sorry. I apologised to him, I do apologise, I’m so sorry.”

For now, it remains unlikely that Kalvin Phillips has a career at Manchester City beyond his season-long loan spell at Ipswich Town, despite Guardiola’s insistence on the possibility of the former Elland Road star re-entering his thinking from the 2025/26 season onwards.