Pep Guardiola reacts to Manchester City’s Champions League last-16 play-off tie with Real Madrid | OneFootball

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has offered his first reaction to taking on Real Madrid for a place in the UEFA Champions League last-16 following Friday’s draw.

The Premier League champions have found themselves thrown into a hugely challenging situation in Europe’s premier club competition after a 22nd place finish in the league phase left them with the possibility of facing Real Madrid or Bayern Munich in a play-off tie.

Friday morning then confirmed that it would be a fourth consecutive season that Manchester City would be taking on Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League, and upon completion of the two meetings this year, they will face faced one another on 14 occassions.

Speaking during his pre-match press conference ahead of Manchester City’s meeting with Arsenal in the Premier League on Sunday afternoon, much of the initial talk centred around the club’s fate in the UEFA Champions League.

“Well, it looks like a derby already! Four years in a row facing (Real) Madrid,” Guardiola reacted to the news that his Manchester City side will take on Los Blancos in a two-legged affair in February for a place in the competition’s last-16 stage.

He continued, “Hopefully we can arrive in the moment of the first-leg here and the game one week later in Madrid as best as possible.”

The contest with Madrid will be sandwich between some mammoth domestic games, of which Guardiola said, “It’s tough to play Real Madrid or Bayern Munich. The problem is in the middle we have to play Newcastle, and always they are so kind for the calendar for many, many years.”

“The draw could have been nicer, yes. For one goal, we could’ve played another one. But who is to say that playing Celtic de Glasgow or another team would be even worse. We could play awful and they go through.

“The draw is the draw. Bayern Munich is extremely difficult, Real Madrid is extremely difficult.”

Manchester City will take on Real Madrid in a last-16 play-off tie with the first-leg of that clash taking place at the Etihad Stadium in two weeks and after an FA Cup fourth round tie away to Leyton Orient.

The second-leg will then take place in the Spanish capital and the iconic Santiago Bernabeu stadium, with those two matches coming among a fierce schedule for City including meetings with Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle United, and Nottingham Forest.