His side must win Champions League or never get ‘recognition from everyone in the world’

PEP GUARDIOLA has admitted that Manchester City have to win the Champions League if they are to be remembered as one of football’s greatest teams.

City have been the dominant domestic force of the last decade, winning five Premier League titles, two FA Cups and six League Cups.

But on a day that could decide the destiny of the championship, Guardiola accepts that he has to get his hands on the European crown for City to be considered genuine football royalty.

His side face six-time European champions Liverpool at the Etihad today, and Guardiola said: “What we feel inside is that we will remember this period with big satisfaction at what we have done.

“Sometimes we are happy. But we also need the proof from outside to get the happiness – and that is stupid.

“Always you are looking for proof from the outside that what you are doing is right.

“I agree with those people who say, ‘Yes, but they didn’t win in Europe, they didn’t win the Champions League’ – and maybe they are right.

“To get this recognition from everyone in the world you have to conquer Europe.

“Maybe it’s not going to happen, I don’t know.

“But so far, with what we have done here, we are incredibly happy, because we have fun first of all and have done many good things. That’s my feeling.

“If it’s enough or not enough, it doesn’t matter.” City face Liverpool holding a one-point lead at the top of the Premier League after being reeled in by Jurgen Klopp’s side since January.

City had a 14-point advantage before Liverpool won their two matches in hand during a 10-game winning streak.

Klopp, who ruled Europe in 2019 (right), has already lifted the Carabao Cup this season, and his team will face City again on Saturday, in the semifinals of the FA Cup.

In midweek, both clubs go into their Champions League quarter-finals holding first-leg leads, after City beat Atletico Madrid 1-0 and the Reds returned from Benfica with a 3-1 victory. Liverpool are still in the running for an historic Quadruple. City are on a Treble hunt, and the Champions League draw means the two clubs are on course to meet in the final in Paris next month. Guardiola and Klopp have forged one of the Premier League’s greatest rivalries over the last few years after locking horns in the Bundesliga when the Catalan was coach of Bayern Munich and the German was in charge of Borussia Dortmund.

Guardiola learned a bit in Spain about intense runs of head-to-heads. The City manager believes that he now faces a week that has the same hallmarks of a legendary period during his time as Barcelona boss when his team met bitter rivals Real Madrid four times in the space of 18 dramatic days.

Barca went on to win La Liga after a draw in the Bernabeu, and prevailed over two legs in the Champions League after losing to Jose Mourinho’s Real side in the Copa del Rey final.

All four games were tempestuous and poisonous affairs.

Guardiola said: “It’s quite similar, the rivalry with Liverpool. But the atmosphere here is different. It is not comparable with Barcelona and Madrid.

“It’s not that City against Liverpool is better or worse, it’s just different – the way football is lived here and in Spain is completely different.

“This is the best country in the world to be a manager. The best. And to be a football player as well. It’s the best.

“Listen, we get criticism and a lot of nice things, depending on whether we lose or win. But how people respect managers and players is incomparable to other countries in my opinion.”