Pep Guardiola has urged UEFA to revisit Champions League knockout rules after Manchester City were paired with Real Madrid in the round of 16. City have now drawn Madrid again weeks after their most recent meeting, a 2\u20131 league victory in December.<\/p>\n
Guardiola said he wants to prevent early repeat fixtures that can come from teams who already met in the competition\u2019s opening phase. \u201cYes, it is a little bit weird [to face Madrid again],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The manager pointed to the timing of the group stage finish as part of the issue, noting that the last game of the group stage\u2014Real Madrid vs. Benfica\u2014became the first draw. He argued that the current sequence made the outcome appear unusual and suggested UEFA should consider changes to stop teams who met in the first stage from meeting early in the knockouts.<\/p>\n
City face a daunting path through the knockout stages. Their portion of the bracket includes Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Galatasaray and Atalanta alongside Real Madrid, making the route to the final especially demanding on paper.<\/p>\n
Arsenal avoided that side of the draw and were paired with Bayer Leverkusen for the next round. Mikel Arteta\u2019s team would face Bod\u00f8\/Glimt or Sporting CP in the quarterfinals, with one of Barcelona, Newcastle United, Atl\u00e9tico Madrid or Tottenham Hotspur waiting in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Despite the apparent imbalance, Guardiola dismissed the notion that Arsenal have an easier route. \u201c [It] would be so disrespectful [to], for example, Newcastle, Barcelona, top teams, Atl\u00e9tico Madrid or Spurs,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I\u2019m not a fan of that [saying it\u2019s the easier half of the draw].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola urges rule change after Manchester City again draw Real Madrid in Champions League last 16<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,238],"tags":[1162,1047],"class_list":["post-7140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-manchester-city","tag-analytics","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}