Jesus reveals Pep made him cry before Man City exit

Gabriel Jesus has revealed that he decided to leave Manchester City when Pep Guardiola made him cry by leaving him out of a Champions League starting XI.

Jesus departed the Premier League champions for Arsenal last summer in search of more regular first-team football.

And speaking to the Denilson Show podcast, the Brazilian claimed that he knew he wanted out when he was not included in the City side that faced Paris Saint-Germain in November 2021.

Jesus said: "He put Zinchenko as a false nine. Crazy thing.

"The day before, he didn't even use him [Zinchenko] in training, he had put me in as striker. Zinchenko even joked with me, 'That day I felt bad for you'.

"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'. He put a left-back there. I went crazy."

The four-time Premier League winner, 26, also revealed that the PSG incident was not the only time that he did not see eye to eye with Guardiola.

He said: "Five minutes after Mbappe scored the goal for 1-0, he [Guardiola] called me. I gave an assist and scored and we turned it around 2-1.

"In the next game, I thought I was going to play and I didn't play.

"There was a lot of that with him and it's not easy. That's when I decided I didn't want to stay any more and I decided to leave."

Both Jesus and Zinchenko signed for the Gunners months later, finishing as Premier League runners-up to City having sat top for the majority of the 2022-23 campaign.