KIDS’ BREXIT BLOCK
MANCHESTER CITY must seriously raise their game if they are going to reach the Champions League final this season — let alone win it.
But if they can do that, former Manchester United ace and Betfair ambassador Dimitar Berbatov (below) knows it will be the greatest achievement in their history.
The Bulgarian said: “Now the title race is over for Manchester City, the Champions League will be their No.1 goal.
“All their effort will be going towards trying to win their Holy
Grail, a trophy they have been chasing for so long.
“But the way they are playing isn’t up to their own standards and they need to up their game if they want to go to the final and even win it.
“So it is going to be a tough road ahead.
“City have never won the Champions League and, if Pep Guardiola pulls it off, it will be the club’s greatest achievement.
“They have already been champions and have won domestic cups, but Europe has always got away from them.
“Whoever wins it for City, the coach and the players will be heroes. It’s a big test for them.
“They have let their game drop this season, so they need to put more effort in.”
Berba knows what it takes to reach the Champions League final, having done so twice in an illustrious career. Firstly,
ENGLISH sides will miss out on Europe’s brightest young stars when the Brexit transition period ends.
Currently, players aged 16 to 18 can move between clubs within the EU as part of a FIFA exemption.
But, after leaving the bloc, English football would have with Bayer Leverkusen in 2002 and then with United seven years later. Both times he came away with a runners-up medal.
But his experiences taught him that City will have a major task if they are to reach this season’s showpiece finale at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul on Saturday, May 30.
Opponents don’t come any tougher than their next opponents, Real Madrid.
The Spanish giants have won the trophy a record 13 times.
And, in his first spell as manager at the Bernabeu, Zinedine Zidane became the first manager to win it three times in a row.
All those ingredients make for a fascinating battle between the two sides and managers when they meet in Madrid for the first leg of their round-of-16 clash a week on Wednesday.
Berbatov added: “City have a big test against Real Madrid and Zinedine Zidane. If anyone knows how to play this tournament, it is them. “Zidane knows how to approach the games. Of course, it’s not guaranteed they will win again, but the numbers play in their favour.
“Both teams will prepare and these days every team knows everything about the opposition – the good players, the bad players, the strong sides, the weak sides – and we will see what happens.”
With that in mind, Berbatov expects a chess-like battle between Guardiola and Zidane.
He said: “It’s not going to be an open game because both coaches will want to mastermind something and surprise the other team because in this game winning is everything.
“It’s not about the game, it’s about winning the tie – even if it is ugly.” to plead with FIFA to still enjoy that luxury.
Without the exemption, players such as Cesc Fabregas and Hector Bellerin would not have signed for Arsenal before turning 18.
And Stephen Weatherill, a professor at Oxford University and one of the country’s leading experts on EU law, said: “I would imagine that the rest of European football is very happy at the prospect.
“It’s entirely inconceivable that FIFA would extend that exemption to the UK, but it would be fully in line with the UK’s attitude to Brexit.
“It reduces the predatory power of the Premier League teams – there’s no doubt about that.”