Gabriel Jesus has revealed the incident that made him leave Manchester City for Arsenal in 2022.
Gabriel said he cried after manger Pep Guardiola picked Oleksandr Zinchenko ahead of him, he was left in tears and told his mother he wanted to quit Manchester City.
The Arsenal striker worked under Guardiola for five years at the Etihad stadium before joining Arsenal last summer, a move he said made him feel “free.”
Speaking to the “Denilson Show” podcast, Jesus said: “There was a Champions League game, PSG, at home, in which he put [Oleksandr] Zinchenko as a false 9. Crazy thing.
“The day before, he didn’t even use [Zinchenko] in training, he had put me in as a striker. Zinchenko even joked with me: ‘that day I felt bad for you.’
“Two hours before the game, there’s a team talk, the team eats, rests for 30 minutes and goes to the game. He told us the team, I didn’t even eat. I went straight to the room, crying, I called my mother to talk: ‘I want to leave.’ I’m going home, because he put [Zinchenko] on, and he didn’t put me on. He put a left-back there. I went crazy.”
Gabriel Jesus replaced Zinchenko in the second half and set up the equaliser before scoring a late winner to give City a 2-1 win.
“I didn’t warm up,” Jesus added. “I felt bad. Five minutes after [Kylian] Mbappe scored the goal for 1-0, [Guardiola] called me. I gave an assist and scored; we turned it around 2-1. In the next [Champions League] game [a 2-1 win at RB Leipzig], I thought I was going to play, and I didn’t play.
“There was a lot of that with him [Guardiola], and it’s not easy. But one [player] evolves. It is really hard. That’s when I decided, I didn’t want to stay anymore. And I decided to leave.”
