Riyad Mahrez has played down Manchester City’s chances of finally winning the Champions League following their record-breaking 5-0 thrashing of Sporting Lisbon.
And boss Pep Guardiola also refuses to read too much into City’s thumping win which has all but secured their place in the quarter-finals.
Mahrez claims City still have a long way to go before they can dream of appearing in this season’s final on May 28 in St Petersburg.
The Algeria star, who began the rout of Sporting with his 10th goal in his last 11 Champions League appearances, claims the Blues’ sole focus is Saturday’s clash with Tottenham at the Etihad.
“The Champions League isn’t easy and it’s not like a league,” said Mahrez, who is City’s top scorer this season with 17 goals.
“You have to be there in so many ways, we have to be strong and arrive at the end.
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“It will be difficult, we’ll focus on the next game and we’ll see.
“This was a good performance and we have a very good team, but we have to keep going.
“Winning this competition is very far from now, we go match by match. We won this game and we played a great match.
“Our mentality is we push each other every day. Now it’s time to focus on the Premier League and try to play a good game against Tottenham.”
City became the first team to score four first-half goals in a Champions League knock-out game as they thrashed Sporting to equal their biggest away win in the competition.
But Guardiola refused to see City’s destruction of Sporting as sending out a message of intent to their rivals.
The City boss was unhappy with his side’s passing and remembers all too well that they did not win last season’s competition despite being “perfect” in his words.
The Blues won 11 of their 13 games and their only defeat was against Chelsea in the final in Porto.
“Yeah, I know people will see this as a statement,” said the City boss. “But the quarter-finals, if we go to the next round, it will be in a month and I don’t know what will happen.
“We almost made a perfect Champions League last season. We played 13 games, we won 11, and drew one when we were already qualified here against Porto.
“And we lost the final and it was like ‘what a f*****g failure this team is’ and it was not true.
“We made a perfect Champions League, but in the Champions League Final we didn’t perform as we normally do.
“That’s why against a top side, a world champion - I congratulate them publicly for the first time for being Club World Champion - the margin of the Champions League is in this detail.
“I’m not going to hide behind the 0-5. We made in general very good things, but we didn’t read the spaces to attack them in the way they move.”
