{"id":20606,"date":"2023-04-23T13:58:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-23T13:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/mahrez-hopes-hat-trick-will\/"},"modified":"2023-04-23T13:59:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T13:59:29","slug":"mahrez-hopes-hat-trick-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/mahrez-hopes-hat-trick-will\/","title":{"rendered":"Mahrez hopes hat-trick will keep him at forefront of Guardiola’s plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez is hoping that his historic hat-trick against Sheffield United in Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final will keep him in coach Pep Guardiola’s starting line-up in future games.<\/p>\n

“There are a lot of players inside the team and everyone is looking for an opportunity,” the Algerian playmaker told BeIN Sports after City reached the final with a 3-0 win over Sheffield.<\/p>\n

“When you get an opportunity you have to prove to the coach that you deserve to play.”<\/p>\n

Mahrez, 32, did not feature in either of City’s Champions League quarter-final games against Bayern Munich, when Guardiola’s team won 4-1 on aggregate.<\/p>\n

But he was the hero against second-tier Sheffield after becoming the first player to score a hat-trick in an FA Cup semi-final since 1958, and the first player from City to bag a treble at Wembley Stadium.<\/p>\n

“We compete with each other and motivate each other for the benefit of the team and in order to improve; we will see how the situation is in the next games,” added Mahrez who has scored 15 goals in 38 games in all competitions with City this season.<\/p>\n

Guardiola said Mahrez was always “grumpy” when he did not play.<\/p>\n

“All the time, he makes me notice he’s grumpy. Today, no. He’s an exceptional player and his play was exceptional. A biggest-stage player who has the mentality to score goals,” said Guardiola.<\/p>\n

City, who are chasing a hat-trick of titles this season, will face either arch-rivals Manchester United or Brighton & Hove Albion in the FA Cup final on June 3.<\/p>\n

\n

(Editing by Ahmed Mostafa, Osama Khairy and Clare Fallon)<\/p>\n

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Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez is hoping that his historic hat-trick against Sheffield United in Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final will keep him in coach Pep Guardiola’s starting line-up in future games. “There are a lot of players inside the team and everyone is looking for an opportunity,” the Algerian playmaker told BeIN Sports after City reached […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":20607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXNPEJ3M05B-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20609,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20606\/revisions\/20609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}