Pep Guardiola has admitted Manchester City must win the Champions League if they are to be considered a big club.
A report on Tuesday named City as football’s most valuable brand, but Guardiola knows only victory in Europe’s blue riband competition will elevate the club into the truly elite bracket. As he prepared his team for the final showdown with Inter Milan in Istanbul on Saturday, Guardiola declared: “We must … accept that if we want to make a definitive step as a big club, we must win in Europe.
“We have to win the Champions League – that's something you can't avoid. Sooner or later, we have to win in Europe to go to another level. The important thing is to be there again and again and again.
“Two years ago, we were there. Two years later, we are here again. That's what defines a big club when year after year, you make it to the Champions League fighting in the latest stages, and winning the title.”
City’s players returned to training on Tuesday after lifting the FA Cup trophy by beating Manchester United on Saturday. Guardiola is likely to field the same XI that started at Wembley but Kyle Walker, who was substituted late on, missed training with a back problem.
The City boss said: “He had a disturbance in his back. Yesterday, he was not good. Today he was a little bit better. We didn't want to take a risk and we will see in the next days.”
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Inter Milan have serious pedigree in Europe’s top competition, having won consecutive European Cups in 1964/65 and completed a Treble in 2010 under Jose Mourinho. They may have finished third in Serie A this season – 18 points behind winners Napoli – but Guardiola is not underestimating his opponents.
“We're going to try to do our best and we know the final is how you behave in that specific 95 minutes, not history,” he said. “For history, they are better than us. It is about what you have to do to be better than the opponent in 95 minutes.
“It doesn't count what you have done in the group stages or the Premier League or the FA Cup. We have to be better than them.”
He added: “I cannot deny the quality of the opponent but we are confident, I'm so optimistic.”
Man City lost their only previous Champions League final to Chelsea in 2021, but Guardiola does not think that experience will hinder them in Istanbul. "I can't speak for the players, some were there some weren't, it's a different situation,” he said.
"Two years ago isn't long and of course we want to finish differently but we have to know exactly what we have to do. In terms of approach, what to do with and without the ball. In that moment we were just preparing a final, we'd lost two times against Thomas Tuchel's Chelsea and had some doubts.
"It is not the same but they play five in the back, Chelsea and Inter. The approach was defensive too, but of course Chelsea also had incredibly good patterns to punish us. It is not similar but there are some things."
