Guardiola urges fans to wear masks at stadiums

Pep Guardiola has publicly urged fans to wear their masks when attending football games to limit the spread of COVID-19 amid a new wave that has dealt a hard blow to numerous countries around the world.

The Manchester City coach expressed his surprise about the fact that there are people in the UK who do not wear their masks in indoor public spaces.

"You can't imagine how different it is playing with people than without people," said Guardiola.

"It doesn't compare. In the end we played behind closed doors so the economy of world football would survive, for the broadcasters. Thanks to that, we kept getting our salaries and could play football for the people.

"Hopefully it won't happen again, but cases are raised all around the world. These people go to the stadiums, and can contaminate.

"There are people in the stadiums who don't use masks, and that surprises me the most. You walk in the street, you go to the big malls, to places to buy presents for the family and no one uses masks.

"Vaccinations, booster jabs, the people [can] decide, but a part of that has to be social distancing and masks. It's the best way to protect ourselves, our families and the rest of the people.

"Like this, the restaurants could still be open, and football could go on. I'm not a scientist or a doctor but I trust the doctors and scientists because they know more than I know.

"Wearing a mask is so important, like social distancing and hand sanitisers, so let's try to do it. Otherwise, it may [come back] again and again and again."

The South America players' fatigue

Guardiola also discussed about the hardship that the South American players are going through every time they are called up for international duty.

"There was a period this season when [Ederson] came back from previous internationals with Brazil and was a bit low, a bit sad, and sometimes that happens in a season," Guardiola added.

"But over the last two or three weeks in his training sessions I feel this is the best Eddy we have had.

"Sometimes you have no specific reason for it, but it's especially the case for players from Argentina, Brazil, all the South Americans. They go there and, because of the pandemic, play three games, whereas before it was two.

"They travel from here to Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, to other places, take the plane, come back here, have jet lag, come back to totally different conditions."