Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has asked those who compare Lamine Yamal to Messi to give him time before continuing with this, and not just a little, but around 15 years, since that doing it before would be in vain.

“I think we have to let Lamine Yamal have his career. And when he's been playing for fifteen years, we'll say if he's better or worse. Let him have his career. And the fact that they're comparing him to Messi is a big deal. Like if they compare a painter to Van Gogh, they'll say, 'Wow, he's not bad, it's a sign that he's good.' And that comparison is a sign that he's good. But we have to let him have his career. And we'll see,” he said in an interview with GQ magazine.

For Guardiola, the current Barcelona winger “is quite good,” although “Messi has been a big deal. It's 90 goals in one season, for 15 years, non-stop, without injuries. It's a big deal. Let him. Let him,” he added.

The award-winning coach He also closed the door on a possible return to Barcelona, saying that, although his time as a Barcelona footballer and coach "was very nice", he considers that it is over "forever" and that he would not return to the club, not even as president.

"It's over now. It's over forever. It was very nice but it's over now. Returning as president? No, I'm not good at this," he said in a conversation in which he also indicated that when his time at City ends he is "more than decided" to stop for an indefinite period of time: "One year, two years, three years, five, ten, fifteen...".

He also analyzed his season with the 'citizens': "When you win six Premier Leagues, there comes a time when you go downhill. That's human nature. Then, we probably should have moved more players, but it's very easy to say that afterward. It's a process that had to happen, which happens, it took longer to happen, and when it happened, it went deeper than we could have imagined." "In retrospect, we'll see that it hasn't been such a bad season. But we have gone for many months without winning games. We've gone like 13 or 14 games without winning, and that was... It's never happened before. But it puts you in your place. It's been very healthy that it happened to us. Because success confuses you," he declared.

The Sampedor native also reflected on his profession: "I've been in every away stadium for four or five months this year with the crowd shouting, 'You'll be sacked in the morning.' I mean, they're going to throw you out. There's no profession architect, teacher, doctor, journalist...that 60,000 people are asking to lose their job. They want you to lose your job. But our profession is so well-paid, they pay us so much money, to accept this." And if you don't want it, you go do another job."

"The passion is different than when I started. There were more insecurities, there were many more doubts, there were many more fears, but I still love it. In football, there was a moment when I said enough, it's over. And as a coach, the day will come when I'll say enough, I no longer have desire for players, for opposing tactics, for press conferences every three days, for my boss... I'll say: now I am my own boss, I no longer have to set the alarm and I can decide in my life. Well, one day it will come, and when it comes, I'll stop and come back later, or not, and then we'll see," he added.

Regarding his relationship with footballers, he said: "I'm 23 and I choose eleven every three days. The next eleven feel that I don't love them, and it's quite the opposite, I love them even more because I suffer for them. Every three days I tell at least eleven different players: You're not good enough and I don't love you, you're good, but your teammate is better than you. That's why there are conflicts, there's nothing more to it than this."