MANCHESTER: Pep Guar­diola has challenged his Manch­ester City side to prove they are still “something special” in their blockbuster Champions League tie against Real Madrid despite a turbulent season for the Premier League champions.

The two clubs meet in Europe’s elite competition for a fourth consecutive season but this time much earlier in the tournament as both under-performed in the new league phase.

City sneaked into the next round in 22nd place in the 36-team table by winning their final game against Club Brugge, while defending champions Real finished 11th.

Guardiola admitted at Monday’s pre-match press conference that his team, European champions in 2023, were “not even close” to finishing in the top eight, which meant automatic qualification for the last 16.

Real Madrid, European champions a record 15 times, secured a seeding for the knockout play-offs, meaning they host the second leg of the tie, which the City boss admitted was an advantage.

“When you finish 22nd [out of 24] you cannot ask any favour, you cannot ask anything that you didn’t win,” Guardiola said ahead of Tuesday’s first leg at the Etihad. “Always I believe what happens in football, normally you have to deserve it and we didn’t deserve it.”

The Catalan said he still had faith in his team after a decade of success despite their struggles this season, during which he has had to cope with injuries and a loss of form.

City have won six out of the past seven Premier League titles, including the last four in a row, but they are currently in fifth spot and realistically out of the title race.

“I will not deny how I trust the players that gave us the incredible decade, all of us, winning a lot of things and playing at high standards and I know what we are capable of,” he said. “The team has something special and hopefully tomorrow we can prove it.”

Alongside the past two title winners, Bayern Munich and Paris St Germain are also facing unexpected jeopardy in the two-leg playoffs on back-to-back midweeks in February.

Seven-time European champions Bayern have a long road back to a home-field final on May 31 after placing 12th in the league standings. Still, the blow of being in the playoffs was softened by being drawn against Celtic instead of City.

The runaway Scottish league leaders, who won the 1967 European Cup seven years before Bayern’s first title, host the first leg on Wednesday.

PSG could hardly be in better shape ahead of the first leg of their play-off tie against domestic rivals Brest on Tuesday, for which they are overwhelming favourites.

Their stuttering European form at the tail end of 2024, when defeats against Arsenal, Atletico Madrid and Bayern left them in danger of being eliminated early from the Champions League, is now firmly behind them.

Luis Enrique’s team swept aside City and VfB Stuttgart to secure a place in these knockout phase play-offs, scoring four goals against each opponent.

An all-France game in February was impossible in the past 20 years because UEFA separated teams from the same country until the quarterfinals draw. Now the tennis-style seeded knockout bracket does not keep national rivals apart.

There could have been Dutch and Italian derbies in the playoffs but Juventus was paired with PSV Eindhoven, with the first leg in Turin on Tuesday, and Feyenoord got AC Milan with the first leg in the Netherlands on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, Club Brugge host in-form Atalanta, the Europa League title holders, who are the dangerous floaters in the playoffs, and two-time champions Benfica travel to Monaco.

Borussia Dortmund, the 1997 champion and last season’s beaten finalists, are away to Sporting Lisbon on Tuesday. Both teams fired their coach in recent weeks.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2025