{"id":496030,"date":"2026-02-28T18:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T18:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/496030\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T18:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T18:01:11","slug":"pep-guardiola-questions-weird-champions-league-draw-with-fierce-arsenal-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/496030\/","title":{"rendered":"Pep Guardiola Questions \u2018Weird\u2019 Champions League Draw With Fierce Arsenal Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has encouraged UEFA to alter its rules for the Champions League knockout stages to prevent repeats of previous fixtures after his side once again drew Real Madrid in the round of 16.<\/p>\n

City and Madrid have already faced off 11 times since the start of 2020 and will take that tally to 13 after Friday\u2019s round of 16 draw<\/a> brought the two teams together again. Some ever-present Premier League teams have only had 12 games against the Cityzens since the decade began.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the last time City<\/a> faced Madrid<\/a> was just weeks ago as Guardiola\u2019s side battled to a 2\u20131 win<\/a> in the league phase back in December. The boss wants a change to stop teams that met in the first stage of the competition from meeting early on in the knockouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, it is a little bit weird [to face Madrid again],\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cNot many times does it happen that the last game of the group stage\u2014Real Madrid vs. Benfica\u2014is the first draw. It looks different. People will agree or disagree, but it is different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guardiola: Arsenal\u2019s Side of the Draw No Easier\"Pep<\/p>\n

Guardiola believes Arsenal have a tough draw of their own. | David Price\/Arsenal FC\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

City face an incredibly daunting path to the Champions League final, needing to emerge from a side of the bracket which, alongside Madrid, also includes Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Galatasaray and Atalanta.<\/p>\n

Arsenal avoided a spot on that gauntlet<\/a>. Drawn against Bayer Leverkusen in the next round, Mikel Arteta\u2019s side would meet Bod\u00f8\/Glimt or Sporting CP in the quarterfinals, with one of Barcelona, Newcastle United, Atl\u00e9tico Madrid or Tottenham Hotspur waiting in the semifinals.<\/p>\n

While City\u2019s path may look tougher on paper, Guardiola insisted Arsenal<\/a> have it no easier than anybody on his side of the bracket.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It] would be so disrespectful [to], for example, Newcastle, Barcelona, top teams, Atl\u00e9tico Madrid or Spurs,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I\u2019m not a fan of that [saying it\u2019s the easier half of the draw].<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, for everybody Bod\u00f8\/Glimt is top, right? Bod\u00f8\/Glimt now is, \u2018Oh my God, what a team!\u2019 So, Champions League is so \u00addifficult. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying Madrid is not difficult, everybody knows it, but the rest of the teams that you play, I don\u2019t know, you can name me any team, all of them, they have the trick. If you want to go through in this competition right now, you have to win against the best teams, otherwise you don\u2019t deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ THE LATEST CHAMPIONS LEAGUE NEWS, ANALYSIS AND INSIGHT FROM SI FC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has encouraged UEFA to alter its rules for the Champions League knockout stages…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-496030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}