Guardiola: How many Champions Leagues does Madrid have? You must respect them”

Work is done. City took a 1-3 lead from Denmark to England, and On Wednesday they beat Copenhagen again 3-1. The seven Blues who started in the Manchester derby on Sunday have been rested in the Champions League. Youngsters like Lewis and Bobb added more first-team minutes, as did Hamilton and Wright in the closing stages. Less used players today such as Kovacic or Nunez were also in the game. Guardiola rejected the idea that he made the changes because he believed the tie was already decided or because he will visit Liverpool on Sunday for a head-to-head duel between the Premier League’s top two sides. When asked about the draw, the Catalan coach expressed confidence in his team, paying tribute to the most successful teams such as Real Madrid or Bayern Munich.

There were seven changes from today’s eleven, did you make them because of Sunday’s game with Liverpool?

We’ll talk about Liverpool on Friday. We played against Luton without thinking about United and we needed freshness today. Some of our players were exhausted, we only had three days of rest compared to the last game. We play on Sunday, not Saturday, this only happens in this country. This competition is deceptive and very dangerous. Before the game we talked about how if they scored first there would be too much emotion, we needed to score first. We knocked out a team that beat United and Galatasaray and drew with Bayern. We need all the players if we want to compete for all the titles. We are now among the top eight in Europe.

Having played today, his team will have more time to rest before the game with Liverpool…

I will answer your questions about Liverpool on Friday, if I answer today I will not see your faces at the press conference on Friday. It’s best not to focus on fatigue or recovery days.

Is there a team you prefer or want to avoid in the quarter-final draw?

I’m worried about all the opponents, they are very difficult. I think when I arrived the club didn’t feel like we could progress in the same way as when I was at Barcelona, ​​but now we’re here again. And that’s because he had time that coaches don’t have now. Give us time to lose matches like the Monaco match in my first season. If you don’t come here, the team will never learn. Big clubs like Barcelona or Liverpool are used to this pressure, but we need time. Now we can lose, but we can compete with anyone. We played regularly in Europe, even in the season when we lost the final to Chelsea, we won all the previous games. We kept winning and now we are here.

Ten years ago, City treated a draw like this with fear and respect.

How many Champions Leagues have these teams won? We respect them, of course, too. For me, every time we get past the group stage it’s a relief because it’s very difficult. I know how hard it is to play against teams like Copenhagen. I have a lot of respect for my opponents. Real Madrid suffered from the win against Leipzig and they told us it was easy for us to eliminate them. Playing against Luton is also difficult, very difficult. The fact that you’ve won before doesn’t mean anything. It’s very good that we are still alive at all competitions.