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Guardiola draws on Cruyff as he encourages City to ‘enjoy the moment’

Pep Guardiola hasn't won the Champions League since 2011 Expand

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Pep Guardiola hasn't won the Champions League since 2011

Pep Guardiola hasn't won the Champions League since 2011

Pep Guardiola hasn't won the Champions League since 2011

Mike McGrath

Pep Guardiola will have the words of Johan Cruyff ringing in his ears when he sends his players out at the Parc des Princes tonight.

Manchester City will be adopting their own version of Total Football as they seek a place in the Champions League final for the first time.

Guardiola admitted he could only get to sleep when he stopped thinking about the damage Paris Saint-Germain’s Kylian Mbappe and Neymar could inflict. His answer will be for City to make attack their best form of defence and learn from past failures in the competition.

When the pandemic forced last season’s knockout stages to move to single-leg ties, Guardiola paid the price for trying to stifle Lyon with a like-for-like formation. With the lesson learnt, he says City will attempt to impose themselves on Mauricio Pochettino’s team rather than negate them.

“The best balance is to have the ball. If you have the ball all the time, the balance of the team is already there,” Guardiola said.

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“It is the only way. We are going to concede counter-attacks, they have the quality with Mbappe, Neymar, Di Maria, Verratti, Paredes, the physicality and personality they have. They have a lot of weapons.

“The only way to minimise these kind of things is to impose your game like we have built in the last five years. Lyon beat us with counter-attacks, two or three mistakes, we were done. We will try to impose our game.

“I learn from my experience in this competition that as much as you are close in the latter stages, to be who you are the more chance you have to go through.

“When you are thinking a lot about the opponents and what they do, it will be difficult. In this stage you don’t find opponents who don’t have real skills. The way you play with the ball creates stability in the team and that is what we are going to try to do.”

Guardiola looked relaxed on the eve of his biggest European game in his five years at the Etihad Stadium. The mood was the same as how Cruyff approached big games: his mentor at Barcelona would tell him to enjoy the moment.

There was no time to celebrate Sunday’s triumph in the Carabao Cup final.

Players were in for a recovery session on Monday before work started on PSG.

It is “work” but Guardiola wants them to enjoy being at this stage of the competition. Most of City’s players were not involved when they last reached the semi-finals in 2016 and Guardiola wants them to get used to the business end of Europe’s elite tournament.

“I learnt from Johan Cruyff: when you arrive at these stages, there is only one thing you can do, and that is enjoy the game,” Guardiola said.

“Enjoy the responsibility and the pressure. Enjoy the fact that you have not lived more of these situations. That is elite. The mythical sentence, just one minute before we [Barcelona] go to Wembley to play our first final that we won in 1992 against Sampdoria: ‘Get out and enjoy it’.

“Top players enjoy this situation because they take the responsibility.

“That’s why the greatest win this competition and the greatest clubs win this competition. That’s what I want to see in my team.

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“As a moment, enjoy the travel, the coffee you take in the terminal, the hotel, our dinner together watching the other semi-final, the press conference, the walk on the day of the game, the training. All the process.

“It is not just the moment you are going to play. We are privileged to be one of the best four teams in Europe this season and we must enjoy it.”

Guardiola said the Premier League was the important competition, but this is the one City want after their ascent under their Abu Dhabi owners in the past 13 years.

For the Spaniard, getting to the final would prove that he did not “overthink” the big matches. “Every time, you get older, you realise how difficult it is to win trophies,” he said.

“Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, all these teams that have many Champions Leagues in their cabinet and it’s normal for them. For us, it’s something new and we are grateful.

“We were looking for many years to be here.”

There are plenty of sub-plots, including City facing Pochettino again after he knocked them out two years ago with Tottenham. Neymar and Guardiola have linked through Barcelona and the City manager believes his old team would have won more with the Brazilian in their ranks.

Mbappe against Phil Foden is also a match-up between two of the tournament’s most exciting young players. “PSG are so happy to have Mbappe. You cannot imagine how happy we are to have Phil, a City supporter and his status already in the national team,” Guardiola said. 

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