Pique says Manchester isn’t a patch on Barca

Former-Manchester United defender Gerard Pique is clearly not missing his time in England as he explains how he stuggled with the way of life and was especially surprised at how poorly the Old Trafford players ate compared with those at his new club Barcelona.

Catalan born Pique was brought up through the youth system at Barcelona before he was enticed to the Premiership by United with the promise of a better contract and more playing time in 2004. Unlike his close friend Cesc Fabregas at Arsenal, who made a similar move from the Nou Camp to the Premiership, Pique failed to break into the first team but in a good piece of business for United they sold the centre-half back to Barca last summer.

“There are no comparisions with where I live now, but I have no regrets about what I did, in Manchester I learnt to play football because there is nothing else to do, you can only play football,” says Pique.

“I had always lived with my parents in Barcelona, I had my friends from school and from Barca and I was from a generation who had won everything in the youth team. The change was very hard and I arrived without having a good level of English, so I was a little lost in conversations but in Manchester I became a footballer.

“The ‘gaffer’ spoke English that sounded to me like Chinese but I wasn’t the worse and there are players in the team now who do not understand him.”

Pique has been incorporated into a Barcelona team under new coach Pep Guardiola which is now taking the Spanish league by storm after a steady start and the 21-year-old is playing his part with injuries allowing him plenty of minutes.

“He is the most modern trainer that I have had, the most interested in the minute details and he is football sick, it is great to work with him,” says Pique, who feels the difference in the dietary attitudes has been considerable.

“At United they committed outrages, everyone ate what they wanted and taking into account English food you can only imagine what it was. Every 15 days we had to be measured by a machine for fat content in our body. It was incredible to see the stars of the team practically breaking the machine because their diet was hamburgers and beer.”