By Darwin Largo
Manchester City achieved the Treble last season. This means that they won the three most important titles they contested: Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League. The latter is the most important tournament in Europe and the Citizens had never been able to win it in their history, which makes the work of the coach and players even more meritorious.
This Tuesday the English side will start their path in the Champions League 2023/24 with the pressure of defending the title and trying to win it again. Their first opponents will be Red Star Belgrade from Serbia, in the debut in Group G, which they share with RB Leipzig from Germany and Young Boys from Switzerland.
Before the match, boss Pep Guardiola gave a press conference in which he talked about his team's objectives for this new tournament and surprised everyone by relativizing the importance of the title they won last season: "It is incredible that our club won the Champions League, but how many teams have done it? Let's put things into perspective, we didn't do anything special, we've only won it once”.
He added: “Only Real Madrid and Milan have won it back-to-back (in fact, Benfica, Inter, Ajax, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest also did it). I was incredibly proud when we won it twice with Barcelona, but they weren’t in consecutive years. It’s difficult, but we have to try, and if we can’t, we will qualify for next season and try again”.
One of the reasons Pep Guardiola is such a successful coach is his constant demand. Despite winning the Treble last season, he now says he wants to go for more: “The most important thing is that the players do not relax. If the board of directors are relaxed, that’s fine, they aren’t the ones who have to score goals”.
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