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Pep Guardiola

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But Guardiola played down talk of a repeat of last season’s heroics at his pre-match press conference on Tuesday. “It’s better to be here having already won the Champions League but as I said it [the treble season] is finished,” he said. “The only target is to try to qualify tomorrow for the quarter-finals,” he added. 

“We are far, far away, talking about these things. We didn’t say last season until we won the final against United in the FA Cup, so we are at the beginning of March.” 

Guardiola, who also won the Champions League twice as Barcelona manager, in 2009 and 2011, said the bar had been raised in Europe’s top club competition. “It’s getting better and tougher,” he said. “I had the feeling when I arrived at Barcelona in the first years, ‘OK we will arrive in the semi-finals’. 

“Now, to reach semi-finals is so difficult. The teams are better and managers are better. Everything is even more difficult than when I was a football player. But at the end, the better teams always go through.”