Pep Guardiola makes Champions League plea but rejects Arsenal draw suggestion

Manchester City will play Real Madrid in the Champions League last-16 as the two European heavyweights clash in what looks the toughest half of the draw

Pep Guardiola believes the current Champions League format has its flaws after Manchester City were again paired with Real Madrid.

The two teams played each other in the League Phase - with City winning in the Bernabeu - and met in the play-off round last season. The meetings in the last-16 next month will be the 10th and 11th between the clubs across the past five seasons.

That draw comes after Real played Benfica in the final round of League Phase fixtures and then again in the play-off round this month. And Guardiola feels the Champions League would benefit from a change to avoid playing the same team twice until the latter stages.

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"Why not? Today is different. When I started it was eight, nine, 10 teams, they want to increase a lot with the schedule and calendar. It is a question of adapting. Madrid draw is a Madrid draw, what can we do?

"It is a little bit weird. Not many times does it happen that the last game of the group stage - Real Madrid v Benfica - - is the first draw. It looks different. People will agree or disagree but it is different."

And while Guardiola thinks the competition, now with 36 teams, has issues he does not believe City have been handed more difficult route to the final than Arsenal despite most of the European heayweights being on the Blues' side of the draw.

Along with Real, City could have to beat two of Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Chelsea and PSG to reach a final with those six sides responsible for the last 10 Champions League wins. Arsenal, meanwhile, meet Bayer Leverkusen next month and will face either Bodo/Glimt - who beat City 3-1 in the League Phase - or Sporting Lisbon in the quarter-finals. Barcelona and Atletico Madrid are the stiffest looking challengers to the Gunners making the final in Budapest but Guardiola feels it would be wrong to label Arsenal's path as easy.

"Would be so disrespectful, for example Newcastle, Barcelona, top teams, Atletico Madrid or Spurs. I saw Atalanta against Dortmund for a while, and they played quite similar to Gasperini before. So I'm not a fan of that (saying it's easier half of draw).

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"Now for everybody, Bodo/Glimt is top, right? Bodo/Glimt now is, 'oh my god what a team.' Before we played, you already saw and all the fans, 20 games of Bodo/Glimt before, to analyse that team and know it.

"So, Champions League is so difficult. I'm not saying Madrid is not difficult, everybody knows it, but the rest of the teams that you play, I don't know, you can name me any team. All of them, they have the trick. If you want to go through in this competition right now, you have to win the best teams otherwise you don't deserve it."

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