Leroy Sane praises new man Riyad Mahrez as competition for places hots up at The Etihad

Leroy Sane praises new man Riyad Mahrez as competition for places hots up at The Etihad

Leroy Sane says he is delighted to have Riyad Mahrez at Manchester City and believes the increased competition for places will only benefit Pep Guardiola’s side next season.

Mahrez arrived at City in a £60 million move from Leicester City last week, and made his debut for the Sky Blues in a 2-1 defeat to Liverpool earlier today at the MetLife Stadium in New York.

Sane also featured in the International Champions Cup fixture, opening the scoring on the night with a trademark run in-behind the Reds defence and cool finish.


And then German international – who missed out on a place at this summer’s World Cup – says he is thrilled to have Mahrez as his new team-mate.

“I’m happy he’s here,” said Sane of Mahrez, “Every time we played Leicester and he had the ball, I was like: ‘Okay, please don’t do anything creative!’

“I’m really happy that he’s now with us as he’s a really good football player. You can see it already.

“He’s a really good player and a really good person. I can’t tell him that because then he’ll be stronger and take my place!”

Pep Guardiola now has four wingers at his disposal in the form of Sane, Mahrez, Raheem Sterling and Bernardo Silva – however Sane believes the competition will only improve the Cityzens next term and help them deal with what will be a busier than ever fixture list.

He added: “The pressure will be on everyone to do well. If one player plays a lot of games, he can now have a rest – perhaps two games to see if he can recover.

“When you look back at last season with Bernardo Silva – to have that competition makes you stronger and better.

“In the squad, we have good players, who can play in your position. That helps the team and that’s the most important thing.

“We know the Premier League is very hard, playing a game every three days. If you play the whole season, then come the end it can be really hard.”