Pep Guardiola called me overweight… now every new club I go to asks about my body, rants ex-Man City ace Kalvin Phillips
KALVIN PHILLIPS is fed up with talk about his feeding and fitness.
The Manchester City midfielder was famously labelled as “overweight” by his manager Pep Guardiola following the 2022 World Cup.
Phillips admitted the brutal remark and the aftermath was the “toughest moment” he has experienced as a footballer.
And now the former Leeds man insists his body shape is the first topic of conversation with any club.
Phillips – who has made just six competitive starts for City since a £42million move from Elland Road in 2022 – was shipped out on loan to West Ham for a difficult loan spell last season.
Now he is spending the 2024-25 campaign with Premier League new-boys Ipswich – where he feels at his physical peak.
Phillips told former Leeds team-mate Patrick Bamford on the My Mate’s A Footballer podcast: “You probably heard about the time when Pep came out and said that I was overweight after the World Cup and I think that narrative on social media just grew and grew.
“Every club that I’d go and spoke to, the manager and the nutritionist would always speak about weight before they’d say anything else.
“And it got to the point where it peed me off a little bit.
“I was getting quite frustrated with it, but now I’ve come to Ipswich and the manager’s an unbelievable person as well as a manager.”
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Phillips enjoyed his best football with boyhood club Leeds – helping them into the Premier League in 2020 and then forcing his way into the England squad.
The Whites earned promotion under Marcelo Bielsa, who set Phillips an ambitious body composition target to maximise his performances on the pitch.
However, within months of his big-money switch to the Etihad, Guardiola publicly ridiculed the Yorkshireman for his weight – a comment he later apologised for.
But still not getting a look in at City, Phillips opted for Portman Road as the place to try and reignite his career at the age of 28 under Kieran McKenna.
Phillips added: “We spoke about all my past stuff that happened in my career.
“He just said, ‘I’m big on body composition and I just want you to get to where you were when you left Leeds or when you were at Leeds.
“‘I think that’ll give us a good starting point for you to push on and hopefully get back to where you were.’
“It is only recently since I came to Ipswich I have got around about the target Bielsa set me because I have not played much in the last two years, one-and-a-half years.
“The manager is very big on body composition here as well and I thought, ‘I’m not getting off to a bad start here as well, I need to come in and make sure my weight is on point.'”
Phillips has started four times for the Tractor Boys so far.
He is yet to taste victory but McKenna is pleased with what he has seen from the holding midfielder.
The Northern Irishman said after the 2-2 draw with Aston Villa: “I think game by game he’s improving, his confidence was coming on the ball a little bit today. He’s been working really well off the ball.
“Of course, it was a shame for him to get the little injury that stopped his momentum, but I thought he stepped back into the team well today after only a couple of days’ training.
“He’s enjoying it, he’s enjoying being part of the group, he’s enjoying the day-to-day work and he’s proving that he can be an important player for us on the pitch.”