Spanish coach Pep Guardiola ruled out the possibility of Manchester City winning the UEFA Champions League with their current form, but he emphasized that his team would be better prepared when facing either Real Madrid or Bayern Munich next month in the knockout rounds.<\/p>\n
City bounced back from a goal down to defeat Club Brugge 3-1 on Wednesday, avoiding elimination from the group stage for the first time since 2012.<\/p>\n
However, they are set to face either the defending champions Real Madrid or Guardiola’s former team Bayern Munich, depending on Friday’s draw.<\/p>\n
City has struggled in the Premier League this season, sitting in fourth place, 12 points behind league leaders Liverpool.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Guardiola expressed confidence that the return of injured players and new signings like Egyptian Omar Marmoush, Uzbek Abdulkadir Khusanov, and Brazilian Vitor Reis would benefit the team in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
In response to a question about whether the 2023 champions could win the continental title again, Guardiola said: “Not at the moment. I’m being realistic.”<\/p>\n
He added: “Madrid has returned strong in terms of results, and Bayern is having an amazing season with Vinnie (coach Vincent Kompany). If we had to play tomorrow, it would be difficult, but in two weeks, we don\u2019t know.”<\/p>\n
He continued, “We\u2019ll prepare well, be ready, and we\u2019ll try. Let\u2019s see what happens.”<\/p>\n
Despite struggling in the first half of the season, City has won six matches and drawn one in their last eight games.<\/p>\n
Guardiola stated, “At least recently, we\u2019ve been getting good results. We\u2019re in fourth place in the Premier League, and we\u2019re not competing for the title, but we\u2019re still in contention.”<\/p>\n
He added, “In the FA Cup, we are in the race. Sometimes things seem impossible today, but tomorrow the mentality and atmosphere change, and I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll try to cause problems for Real Madrid or Bayern.”<\/p>\n
City’s near-elimination was a key factor in making the last round of the group stage in the inaugural Swiss-model competition a highly anticipated event.<\/p>\n
Guardiola expressed his appreciation for the changes in the tournament’s early stages, making the competition more attractive to fans, even if it caused him more stress.<\/p>\n
He believes many other major clubs will face similar struggles in the future.<\/p>\n
He explained, “The problem is that we play many games in October, November, and December, and in the future, big teams will experience what we\u2019ve gone through this season.”<\/p>\n
He continued, “We were close to being eliminated; we were 45 minutes away from that. It\u2019s an incredible lesson for me and the club that nothing is taken for granted.”<\/p>\n
He added, “I congratulate the team for still having pride, and we\u2019ll see how we do in two weeks.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spanish coach Pep Guardiola ruled out the possibility of Manchester City winning the UEFA Champions League with their current form, but he emphasized that his team would be better prepared when facing either Real Madrid or Bayern Munich next month in the knockout rounds. City bounced back from a goal down to defeat Club Brugge …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41899,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41898\/revisions\/41899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}