Man City accused of not collecting Community Shield runners-up medals - Guardiola reacts

Manchester City have been criticised by football fans on social media after allegedly rejecting their Community Shield runners-up medals on Saturday.

The reigning Premier League champions suffered a 3-1 defeat to Liverpool at the King Power Stadium.

Substitute Julian Alvarez cancelled out Trent Alexander-Arnold’s first-half opener In the 70th minute, but late goals from Mohamed Salah and Darwin Nunez earned Liverpool the first trophy of the 2022-23 campaign.

It was a bad day at the office for City’s star summer signing Erling Haaland, who missed several opportunities to score on his competitive debut.

The 22-year-old’s close-range miss shortly before the full-time whistle is likely to give him a sleepless night.

ITV Sport (per Joe.co.uk and others) claimed City’s players chose not to accept the runners-up medals laid out for them.

Indeed, City’s players were not seen collecting their medals before Liverpool’s players lifted the Community Shield.

This went down badly with football fans on social media:

But City boss Pep Guardiola insisted these accusations were wide of the mark during his post-match interview with ITV.

The interviewer said: “Your players didn’t receive their medals, they didn’t accept the medals…”

Guardiola immediately interjected, replying: “Of course we accepted the medals.”

The interviewer responded: “It wasn’t easy to see…”

Watch Guardiola’s interview here:

"We did everything but unfortunately we did not win."