Confident Pep Guardiola expects 'incredible' Manchester City performance

Only twice in seven attempts so far has Guardiola won through a Champions League semi although events in Paris last week suggested it is highly unlikely that PSG will stop him reaching the showpiece final for the third time

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola.

For a manager lauded as possibly the greatest in the history of the sport, Pep Guardiola has a curious question mark hovering over just one aspect of his CV. Tuesday night, at the Etihad Stadium, the Manchester City manager sounds like a man ready to take a large step towards putting that particular record straight.

Inter Milan, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid - all have faced Guardiola in Champions League semi-finals in the dozen years since he entered top-level management and all have beaten him.

Only twice in seven attempts so far has the Catalan won through a semi - in 2009 and 2011 when his Barcelona side swept aside Chelsea and Real, respectively, on its way to lifting the trophy - although events in Paris last week suggested it is highly unlikely that PSG will stop Guardiola reaching the showpiece final for the third time.

A remarkable second-half performance, and dominant 2-1 away victory, put City in the driving seat for Tuesday’s return and hands Guardiola the chance to improve the one statistical area of his remarkable career that could actually do with some improvement.

To put into context, domestic league titles have become so matter of fact for the 50-year-old that in his dozen seasons with Barca, Bayern Munich, and City he will have won nine by the time his team is crowned champions, probably this weekend.

But the Champions League? That is where legend is writ large in his profession and why, for all his protests to the contrary, Guardiola is desperate to make his mark at City, for himself, his legacy, and for his Abu Dhabi paymasters.

Those statistics also explain why Guardiola can be believed when he says that the second leg of a Champions League semi-final is a harder game than the final itself.

“From my experience, the semi-finals are always difficult,” said Guardiola. “You know you play with the result of the first leg, you play with the mind that you’re thinking final, final, final.

Sometimes you can forget what you have to do, which is win the game you are playing. That’s why I’m not thinking much about that.

“In my experience, it’s always difficult in the semi-finals, not just in this club, at all the clubs I have been at. The final is completely different, it’s not easier or more difficult, it is just completely different in the semi-final second leg.”

There seems little danger of Guardiola allowing complacency to seep into his team’s preparations, given the high stakes being played for in the battle to face either Real Madrid or Chelsea in the final in Istanbul at the end of the month.

Certainly, Guardiola appears to be trying to present a more controlled exterior than has possibly been the case in the past - “calm” was a word used by the City manager on more than one occasion in his pre-match press conference.

But, also, after calamitous exits on his watch, to Monaco in the last 16, and successive quarter-final defeats to Liverpool, Tottenham, and Lyon, Guardiola has challenged his players to fashion their own piece of history in the club’s record books.

That “calmness”, not to mention the cushion of two away goals, may also explain why Guardiola even allowed himself to sound uncharacteristically confident ahead of the PSG clash.

“When I arrive in these stages I’m more calm than before, I try to enjoy it,” he said.

“The players are training well, everyone wants to play, everyone wants to help. The second leg of the semi-final is always the toughest game, but we are going to control our emotions, doing exactly what we have to do. This is what I’m looking for and to try to convince them this is the best way to win.

"The disappointment we had, especially in the last two seasons, in the quarter-finals against Spurs and Lyon, being here again, that’s nice.

“I’d love to say we’d learned from that but maybe tomorrow we can play a bad game? At the same time, what I think right now is we’ll do an incredible game and reach the final.

“This is my feeling but if the other ones are better, we congratulate the opponent. We don’t want to miss this opportunity by not being ourselves to do a good game and I’ve a feeling we are going to do well.

The desire to do something nice for all of us in our lives, to be remembered forever … we have to take a step forward and we are going to do it.” 

His old sparring partner Mauricio Pochettino, mastermind of Spurs' quarter-final win over City two years ago, will have other plans in mind, of course, and the PSG coach has even engaged in some good old-fashioned mind games in the build-up.

Kylian Mbappe, who along with Neymar was magnificent in the first half in Paris but faded badly in the second, was pictured limping onto the team bus in Paris earlier this week, amid reports he is a serious injury doubt, with a calf strain.

The veteran of now eight Champions League semis, Guardiola is having none of it.

“Absolutely, he’s going to play,” smiled Guardiola. “And I’m looking forward to him playing, for the football, for the game itself. Hopefully, he can play.

“I felt the two of them played really well in Paris, the first half exceptional, Mbappe was dangerous and Neymar, as usual.

“The second half we were better. But they judged those two because they lost, if they’d won they’d have played good. They are going to play good. We have to find a way for them not to play good and this is what we will try to do tomorrow.”