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Pep Guardiola: We are going to suffer and have pain against PSG’s Messi, Neymar, and Mbappe
On Saturday, Man City demonstrated the power of the collective with a superb team performance away to Chelsea.
And there was more evidence of the teething problems that Mauricio Pochettino is attempting to iron out at Paris Saint-Germain in order to bring some order and cohesion to Europe’s grandest galactico project.
It has been less than 10 months since Pochettino took charge of a team that he stressed yesterday was still very much “under construction,” but Guardiola warned that any attack featuring such a gilded trio had the potential to make opponents look silly over the course of 90 minutes and, as a result, has told his players to brace themselves for some pain.
“They have the talent and we have to do it as a team as we can’t put pressure on one player [to deliver],” the City manager said.
“We have to be compact, help each other and know we are going to suffer and have pain – but you have to handle the pain. It’s the same in the last game [against Chelsea]. They are so good these types of teams, you have to be able to suffer for 90 minutes.”
Guardiola may have been playing to the crowd when he claimed he was unsure how to stop Messi, Mbappe, and Neymar all at once – the Catalan will have enjoyed devising a strategy to do just that – but his point was that sometimes individual brilliance is impossible to contain.
He saw it with Messi at Barcelona and will be aware that no player has scored more Champions League goals against him than the Argentine since they parted ways at the Nou Camp in 2012.
“What should we do? I don’t know,” Guardiola said. “This amount of quality, I don’t know how to stop them. They’re so good. This amount of talent makes it so difficult. They’re exceptional, all of them are so good individually. They can combine and connect.”
This is their first meeting since City’s impressive 4-1 aggregate victory over PSG in the Champions League semi-finals last season, when Pochettino’s side lost both games and, ultimately, their heads.
Angel Di Maria is suspended tonight for his senseless stamp on Fernandinho near the end of the second leg of that semi-final, with the two defeats causing plenty of soul-searching and a summer market splurge.
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Pep Guardiola: We are going to suffer and have pain against PSG’s Messi, Neymar, and Mbappe
