Wayne Rooney Calls City Guards of Honour ‘Incredible’ for the Wrong Reasons

The Etihad turned into a farewell stage on Sunday, but not everyone liked the script.

As Manchester City said goodbye to Pep Guardiola’s decade of domination, Bernardo Silva and John Stones were each given a guard of honour during the second half of the 2-1 defeat to Aston Villa – not after the final whistle, but as they were substituted, with the game still live and the scoreline still in the balance.

For Wayne Rooney, watching on for BBC’s Match of the Day, the timing crossed a line.

"It's incredible," he said. "I've seen a few things this season, and it just makes me sad that some of these things are happening in football. Bernardo Silva and John Stones have been incredible for Manchester City and they deserve it, but do it after the game. If I was in that Aston Villa team, I'd be fuming."

Silva came off just before the hour with the game level. Both sets of players formed a corridor, applause echoing around the ground as he walked off. Twenty minutes later, the scene repeated for Stones. Another guard of honour. Another pause in the contest. Another reminder that this was no ordinary league fixture.

The spectacle jarred with the stakes. Villa still had something riding on the afternoon, with European positioning and coefficient implications in play. Critics saw the ceremonies as a step too far, a blurring of the line between tribute and theatre in a competition that sells itself on relentlessness and jeopardy.

Alan Shearer, sitting alongside Rooney, shared the unease and questioned why Unai Emery’s side went along with it.

"I was surprised that Villa agreed to doing it, particularly with so long left," he said. "I mean, with half an hour, just over half an hour to go with one of the substitutions, so yeah, I'm in Wayne's camp. I'm not a great fan of that while the game is going on."

The night was supposed to belong to Guardiola. Ten years, 20 major trophies, a tactical revolution that reshaped English football. The Etihad crowd came to celebrate an era.

Villa came to spoil it.

Ollie Watkins did exactly that, scoring twice to overturn Antoine Semenyo’s opener and hand the visitors a 2-1 victory. On the scoreboard, it was Villa’s night. Emotionally, it still felt like a Guardiola farewell – but one with a jagged edge.

The guards of honour fed into that tension. City’s players, staff and supporters wanted to mark the contributions of Silva and Stones, two pillars of the Guardiola project. The team’s intensity dipped as the game folded around the goodbyes, the rhythm broken by ceremony.

On the touchline, Guardiola looked drained. When it was over, he admitted he was "so tired" and broke down in tears as he spoke about the bonds built since 2016. What finally cracked him, he said, was watching his players react to Silva and Stones leaving the pitch. The human cost of an era ending hit him harder than the result.

Villa, though, never switched off. They stayed sharp, professional, and hunted the points that still mattered to them. The win nudged them into fourth place ahead of Liverpool, a shift that carried weight beyond the Premier League table. The final standings affected UEFA coefficient spots, with the reshuffle helping Sporting CP skip the qualifying rounds and walk straight into the Champions League proper.

So while City immersed themselves in nostalgia, Villa quietly altered the European landscape.

For Guardiola’s side, the defeat will register as a blemish on a carefully choreographed goodbye, a reminder that sentiment can clash with the ruthless demands of elite competition. Semenyo’s early goal hinted at a routine home win, but as the emotional temperature rose and the tributes multiplied, Villa sensed an opening and took it.

The images will linger: Silva applauded off with the score level, Stones given his own corridor of respect with time still on the clock, Guardiola in tears as the final whistle cut through the noise. Romance on one side, resentment on the other.

And hanging over it all, Rooney’s question in everything but words: how far can football go in honouring its heroes before it starts to chip away at the very edge that made them great?