Football: Pep Guardiola feels City 'not ready' to win Champions League

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has claimed that the Premier League champions are not yet ready to win the Champions League because they are not clinical enough in attack. Guardiola’s remarkable admission comes despite the Premier League champions being the highest scorers in the top division, having scored 29 goals in nine matches. The celebrated football manager has won two consecutive Premier League titles along with other domestic accolades.

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Having won the Premier League in the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons, City may be looked at by many as a serious threat to reckon with in European football but their manager Guardiola is not confident of his team going on to win the UEFA Champions League (UCL) this season. The champions scored twice in the first half to seal victory at Crystal Palace recently.

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In particular, Guardiola referred to an opportunity in the dying stages when Jesus opted to shoot rather than set up an easy chance for Kevin De Bruyne and insisted that could have come back to haunt City had it not been for earlier saves from Ederson to deny Christian Benteke and Wilfried Zaha. Sergio Agüero was available for selection despite having suffered from a minor car crash on Wednesday but Guardiola explained that Jesus had been preferred after performing well for his country. 

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Bad UCL run

City have never progressed beyond the quarter-finals of the Champions League under Guardiola, falling at the quarter-finals in the last two seasons after being defeated by Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur respectively. They also trail by six points to the Premier League leaders Liverpool. A Champions League victory has long been seen as the ultimate ambition of the club’s owner, Sheikh Mansour, as it would truly establish City as a genuine superpower of European football. The city will face Atalanta in their Champions League clash on Wednesday. October 23, 2019 at 12.30 am (IST) at home.

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