Manchester City Pep Guardiola has claimed that winning the Champions League is “not an obsession”.
Guardiola has four Premier League titles but despite spending hundreds of millions of pounds on players at Bayern Munich and then at the Etihad, he has yet to win a Champions League trophy for either club.
The Spaniard missed out on bringing Lionel Messi – with whom he won two Champions League titles at Barcelona – to City when the Argentine instead joined Paris Saint-Germain last summer, but he has added Erling Haaland, Julian Alvarez and Kalvin Phillips to his team in the current transfer window and continues to be linked with a move for a left-back.
City play West Ham on Sunday afternoon in their first Premier League match of the season and speaking at a press conference ahead of the fixture, Guardiola denied he was singularly focused on the European competition.
“My life doesn’t depend [on the Champions League]. I’d like to do it, everyone tries to do it. It’s not an obsession,” Guardiola said.
“To improve the team and play better. This is the main thing for me. The only thing I’m here for is to make the team play better, and the players individually to play better.
“Everyone knows the titles are there but I’m not thinking what will happen in 11 months if we win or lose… this is the only thing,” he continued. “If we win it will be genius, if we don’t we will be failures. Nothing is going to change.”
City reached the semi-finals of the Champions League last term, losing to Real Madrid in extra-time after conceding two late goals in normal time.
