Also I don't think sakura held too long of a grudge against naruto for the womanly comments, as she show great concern for his wellbeing when she learnt that naruto was a jinjuriki and if he is captured by the akatsuki and has his tailed beast extracted he will die. Along with the tenchi Bridge and seeing naruto in his 4 tailed transformation followed up by yamato hinting that she feels something more for naruto.
Arguably afterwards kishimoto did afterwards was slow burning development with the sakura trying feed scene and her showing having a similar pervey side like naruto when kohonahamaru showed of the sexy no justu before doing the big hug in the pain arc.
Now arguably doing the slow burn for a series as long as naruto caused long term problems as many fans failed to see and ended up thinking hinata was the love intrest due to that big pain moment. Heck this tends to be a problem for many series that do slow burn like avatar the last airbender, as not everyone saw it coming despite obvious hints.
It probably didn't help that around this time new editors came in with an anti sakura agenda to replace sakura with hinata which probably effected the writting around sakura so much that it ended up the mess that it did. Also didn't help that kishimoto became very insecure with Sakura's popularity in the west.
Pretty sure kishimoto post ending interviews are just damage control by jump to avoid the backlash with how he made the canon couples and the not a romance manga is just a poor exuse to as to why the canon couples are so bad.
I think its fine if a series makes it that one character is in love with more than one person though they got to make it eventually clear like nisekoi did. Also kishimoto should of really addressed the love confession much sooner to make it clear that sakura was in love with naruto, but also still had some feelings for sasuke.