There was an element of shock when Gabriel Jesus left Manchester City in 2022, but in his mind it had been coming for a few months.
There were just 25 days between Erling Haaland signing and Jesus’ exit for Arsenal. While Haaland’s arrival was the final nail in the coffin for Jesus, this was a decision already in the pipeline.
In fact, Jesus had decided to seek a new challenge the season prior, long before Haaland’s signature was in the bag. And the breaking point was a team selection call that left Jesus in tears and on the phone to family back in Brazil.
Ironically, Jesus had spent years trying to become City’s main central striker amid stiff competition from Sergio Aguero. Yet when Aguero left, Jesus declared an ambition to play more on the wing, leaving City without a recognised striker before Haaland’s arrival.
Still, Jesus was deployed as a false nine on plenty of occasions and Guardiola gave a telling insight into his approach to utilising the Brazilian when he said: “He’s the best striker/defender I ever found to play in the three positions. [He] can play five minutes, he plays the best five minutes of his life. He plays 90 minutes, he will give everything.”
That versatility and option-off-the-bench proved to be the downfall of Jesus’ City career, as the forward recalled a ‘crazy’ decision that prompted him to think about leaving.
“There was a Champions League game, PSG, at home, in which he put [Aleks] Zinchenko as a false nine. Crazy thing,” Jesus said in 2023. “The day before, he didn’t even use him 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 him [Zinchenko] on, and he didn’t put me on. He put a left-back there. I went crazy.
“I didn’t warm up. I felt bad. Five minutes after [Kylian] Mbappe scored the goal for 1-0, he [Guardiola] called me. I gave an assist and scored; we turned it around 2-1. In the next [Champions League] game, I thought I was going to play, and I didn’t play.”
That game was one of Jesus’ more influential at City, the striker developing a useful knack of scoring big goals in big matches. But the nature of his selection on the bench ensured it was in fact the beginning of the end for Jesus at the Etihad. He just needed somewhere to go that summer.
Soon after joining Arsenal for £45m Jesus tried to explain his reasons for leaving. Before the admission over the PSG game had come out, he told ESPN the decision was also connected to Guardiola’s playing style and management of his big stars.
“I was very happy at Manchester City. It’s not that I was unhappy there, but I also had to accept the way the team wanted me to play, and that was clear,” Jesus said.
“The thing was the way he [Guardiola] understood football and what he wanted. It’s up to you whether you accept it or not. If you don’t accept it, it’s ‘thank you’ and we’re off to another challenge. There came a moment when I said: ‘I want something else for myself’.”
Guardiola and City will always allow a player to leave if they are not happy and present an acceptable offer. Arsenal’s bid represented a healthy profit on a player with 95 goals in 236 matches, plus four Premier League titles, four League Cups and an FA Cup in his five-and-a-half years.
It helped Jesus that he could reunite with Mikel Arteta, his old coach at City. Much is made in comparing Arteta and Guardiola yet Jesus put it down to one factor he was deprived of at the Etihad. Freedom.
“It’s different here at Arsenal. It’s different football, there are different players, different ways of playing,” he said in September 2022. “At City it was different.
