Pep Guardiola

Manchester City left back Oleksandr Zinchenko set aside some time on his wedding day to clarify comments he and his new bride Vlada Sedan made about manager Pep Guardiola in the wake of the club's Champions League defeat by Olympique Lyon.

Television reporter Sedan delivered a scathing assessment of Guardiola's tactics and posted an interview with Zinchenko to her YouTube channel after City crashed out in the quarter-finals with a 3-1 loss.

The video prompted an angry response from City supporters and Zinchenko took to social media to defend his comments.

With the millions they have invested in top players and with the most respected coach of his generation in charge, Manchester City should be doing much better than going out of the Champions League in the last eight.

But after their shock 3-1 defeat by Lyon on Saturday that is exactly what City have done in the last three years.

After being eliminated at the quarterfinal stage of the Champions League for a third straight year, Manchester City and manager Pep Guardiola, perhaps unexpectedly, find themselves at a crossroads.

Despite the criticism that Guardiola has faced for his cautious tactics in the 3-1 loss to Lyon on Saturday and the questions about whether he is over-complicating the task in Europe, there is no suggestion that the City hierarchy has lost confidence in the Spaniard.

Manchester City take a 2-1 lead into their Champions League last 16 match against Real Madrid at the Etihad Stadium on Friday but manager Pep Guardiola needs no reminders of how quickly games can turn in Europe's elite competition.

In last year's quarterfinals City went out on away goals to Tottenham Hotspur after looking in command when 4-2 up in the second leg. The previous year, City were blitzed by three Liverpool goals inside 19 first-half minutes as they fell to a 5-1 aggregate defeat.

Manchester City struggles to prevent the best teams from scoring against them and their central defenders could be targeted in Friday's Champions League clash against Spanish champions Real Madrid, former England skipper Wayne Rooney said.

Pep Guardiola's City leads Real after they won the away leg of their last-16 tie 2-1 in March, before Europe's elite club competition was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Manchester City midfielder David Silva will return to the Etihad Stadium for a proper send-off after making his final Premier League appearance for the club in Sunday's 5-0 thrashing of Norwich City, manager Pep Guardiola said.

Silva, who joined City a decade ago, will leave the club at the end of the season and made his 309th league appearance against Norwich, going off to a standing ovation from the City bench in the 85th minute.

Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola never played under Marcelo Bielsa but credits the Leeds United coach as one of the most important influences on his own trophy-laden managerial career.

Experienced Argentine Bielsa will be managing in the Premier League for the first time next season, having steered Leeds back to the top flight after a 16-year absence. And Guardiola, for one, says England's Premier League will be all the better for it.

Manchester City's two-year suspension from European football was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Monday, allowing the club to compete in next season's elite Champions League competition.

CAS ruled that City did not breach Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules by disguising equity funding as sponsorship. Sport's highest court also reduced a fine for failing to cooperate with UEFA to $11.3 million from $34 million. 

Manchester City will attempt to overturn their two-year UEFA ban from European football when a three-day hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland begins on Monday.

European soccer's governing body UEFA ruled in February that City had committed serious breaches of Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations and failed to cooperate with its investigation, handing them a ban and a $34 million fine.

Joan Laporta has said he will seek to bring former manager Pep Guardiola back to Barcelona if his bid to return as president of the LaLiga club in 2021 is successful, Spanish media reported. 

Laporta was Barcelona president from 2003 to 2010 and was at the helm when Guardiola was promoted from the youth team to manager of the senior team in 2008.