Guardiola lauds ‘incredible attitude’ of Man City players
Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola, was ecstatic after reaching the Champions League final on Tuesday.
A 2-0 win over PSG in Manchester saw City claim a 4-1 aggregate victory.
It is the club’s first European Cup/UCL final and Guardiola’s first since leaving Barcelona.
“It is for all of us and the club,” said Guardiola. “I’m incredibly proud and my first thoughts are with the players who didn’t play today. They all deserved to play, everyone has made a contribution and now it is time to enjoy it. We have to win the league and we have two or three weeks to prepare for the final.
“They put a lot of players in the middle and we struggled a lot in the first half to high press and we changed at half-time. We recovered the ball better in the second half and we were much better in the way we played and 4-1 on aggregate against a team that beat Barcelona and Bayern Munich means a lot to us.
“They win the league every year, they are a team built to win, they fought to the end. They a huge team but we were so composed. We fought together and we’re in the final of the Champions League and those are nice words. People believe it’s easy to arrive in the final of the Champions League.
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“Getting to the final now makes sense of what we have done in the past four or five years. Every day these guys have been consistent and this is remarkable. We scored a goal through the hips in the first game, and today Marquinhos hit the bar in the first half – you can be out for little details.
“United won a title because of John Terry’s slip and in the last minute against Bayern Munich and Real won a title against Atletico in the 93rd minute. It’s a competition that is so difficult and something in the stars is involved in that.”