{"id":539056,"date":"2026-03-16T00:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T00:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/539056\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T00:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T00:41:08","slug":"erling-haaland-man-city-striker-playing-most-difficult-position-on-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/539056\/","title":{"rendered":"Erling Haaland: Man City striker playing ‘most difficult position on the planet’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Figuring out his team’s most effective formation means Guardiola has an even bigger puzzle to solve on Tuesday as City aim to overturn a 3-0 deficit against Real Madrid in their Champions League last-16 second leg.<\/p>\n

City lined up in a 4-3-1-2 system against West Ham<\/a>, with Haaland partnering Omar Marmoush in attack and Antoine Semenyo as the number 10.<\/p>\n

It suited none of the players, least of all Haaland who was crowded out, and City switched to a 4-3-3 for the second half.<\/p>\n

Despite their tactical issues, Guardiola says they will give everything against Madrid at Etihad Stadium – and says all City’s players are ready too.<\/p>\n

“If they don’t believe, it is a problem,” he said of their European task. “If you don’t believe when you are in the Champions League, go home. What do we have to lose?<\/p>\n

“It was a tough result [in the first leg]. We will not sit back and see what happens, we will try to propulse, in respect for the fans. We have a team to score two, three, four.<\/p>\n

“But if not, we still have the Premier League, the FA Cup, and next season we know what we will have to do, next season we will be back.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Figuring out his team’s most effective formation means Guardiola has an even bigger puzzle to solve on Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-539056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}