CITY STAR’S CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DREAM

WHAT A CHAMPIONS LEAGUE SPOT WOULD MEAN TO PEREZ

AYOZE Perez has admitted it is difficult not to dream of playing in the Champions League even though he knows Leicester City still have work to do to qualify.

City’s Premier League season resumes in just over a week’s time, with nine games remaining for them to secure their spot.

Brendan Rodgers’ side have an eight-point cushion inside the top four, but finishing in the top five may be enough if Manchester City’s Uefa ban is upheld.

Their appeal hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport finished on Wednesday, with a verdict to come in the first half of July.

If the suspension, handed out after European football’s governing body deemed Man City had broken financial rules, is upheld, then Leicester’s

Champions League buffer is strengthened further.

The club are in an excellent position and Perez has admitted to thinking about playing in the competition for the first time and how that might help his chances with the Spain national team. But now is not the time to be complacent.

“I don’t want to think much about playing the Champions League, but I have,” he told media in Tenerife, where he grew up. “I have to close the qualification with Leicester City.

“If I participate in that competition and I also do well in the Premier League, I can get an opportunity in the Spanish team.”

Perez’s fitness may be a concern for City at the moment though as they prepare for their first game back, against Watford on Saturday, June 20.

The 26-year-old watched from the sidelines as the club held an intrasquad practice match at the King Power Stadium on Saturday, and was absent from training on Tuesday as the club prepared for a behindclosed-doors friendly against Aston Villa last night.