Pep Guardiola has made a surprising admission following Manchester City\u2019s exit from the UEFA Champions League, stating that his toughest challenge in recent years did not come against Real Madrid, but rather Liverpool under J\u00fcrgen Klopp.<\/p>\n
City were knocked out of the competition after suffering a heavy 5-1 aggregate defeat to Real Madrid in the Round of 16, bringing their European campaign to an abrupt end. However, Guardiola\u2019s post-match reflections shifted focus away from the Spanish giants and toward his past battles in England.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest challenge was not against Real,\u201d Guardiola said. \u201cIt was against Liverpool. The main battle has been against J\u00fcrgen Klopp and that Liverpool side.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Spanish manager highlighted the intensity and competitiveness of those encounters, suggesting they were more demanding than any other rivalry he has faced.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re in Spain and you didn\u2019t notice,\u201d he added. \u201cYou have no idea how it was like to face Liverpool in those games, it was a great learning experience for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pep Guardiola has made a surprising admission following Manchester City\u2019s exit from the UEFA Champions League, stating that his toughest\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":45139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4652],"tags":[177,3686,1823,3796,1744,1126,219,3800,359,266,490,3967,178],"class_list":["post-45138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-champions-league","tag-champions-league","tag-david-ornstein","tag-fabrizio-romano","tag-football","tag-guardiola","tag-jurgen-klopp","tag-liverpool","tag-manchester-city","tag-pep-guardiola","tag-real-madrid","tag-ucl","tag-ucl-round-of-16","tag-uefa"],"reading_time":"1 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45140,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45138\/revisions\/45140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}