Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has expressed his frustration with the congested fixture list his side face, suggesting that it could affect their chances of winning the Champions League. City are due to host Real Madrid on Wednesday in the semi-finals of the competition, but before that they must travel to Everton on Sunday to maintain their lead at the top of the Premier League table. The match was moved from Saturday due to the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest taking place in Liverpool that night.
In his pre-match press conference on Friday, Guardiola bemoaned his side’s hectic schedule, saying: ‘I don’t want to be distracted by Real because we have time – not much time because we play Sunday, thank you so much – but the Goodison Park game is a priority. I don’t understand it but I don’t want a fight on that any more. I don’t understand but we have to adapt it. We don’t fight on the schedule from the Premier League, UEFA and so on. It’s not frustrating – how many times can I comment on that? I’m pretty sure that La Liga and the Premier League want to help teams, I don’t think they want to make us uncomfortable. It is the schedule with this amount of games that is the problem. We couldn’t play on Saturday because of Eurovision in Liverpool and we don’t have enough police to do two events at the same time. We would prefer to have more time to prepare but it is what it is. It’s not like in France or Germany where they play on Friday [when teams are in Europe the following midweek].
With City also in the FA Cup, they could play a total of 61 games this season should they reach the Champions League final. Guardiola has surprisingly been reluctant to use subs this season and especially in recent fixtures, though City ought to be able to cope given that they boast a large and highly expensive squad.