Pep Guardiola doesn’t want his Manchester City players to give Bayern too much respect in their Champions League quarter-final.
Pep Guardiola said: “We are focused on what we want to do, try to not just control but finish them, understand the game and the fact we are here in Munich against one of the most historic teams in this competition. We come here to play a football game, 11 v 11, try to do better than the opponent in this game. If you think about what we’ve done in the past, it would be a big mistake not to do our game – that’s what we’ve talked about in the last few days. It’s nice to challenge them [Bayern] and travel around Europe to play these teams, we weren’t there one decade ago – we watched on TV. It’s nice to be here and try to make the semi-final once again. This is our model. What do you do to achieve it? Be yourself as much as possible and do your game as much as possible.”
City have suffered some painful exits under Guardiola, and arguably none more so than last year when they were two goals up in the 180th minute of their tie against Real Madrid but contrived to lose. Captain Ilkay Gundogan wants the team to use those memories as motivation.
Pep Guardiola said: “The further you get, the bigger the hunger to win it. I don’t know who apart from the manager won this competition, I don’t think anyone but we were close. I was close at Dortmund in 2013 and most of the squad was close a couple of years ago but it was not meant to be. That just increases the desire to get back to the final and lift the trophy. That is what the club and this group of players deserve.”
