Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has joked he could be careful to finish Leipzig in the Champions League by giving them “nine strikers”.
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City were held to a 1-1 draw in Germany on Wednesday in the first leg of their last 16 tie with Riyad Mahrez’s opener canceled out by Josko Gvardiol’s header.
“I don’t want to come here and lose 4-3. It should be more open in Manchester,” said Guardiola who coached Bayern Munich to the Bundesliga title in each of his three years in Germany and said City “cannot compete” with the speed of the German team.
“We don’t have a team to compete with them with a lot of transitions, they are better than us and faster than us, except for Kyle (Walker) and Erling (Haaland).
“The pace they have, we don’t have.”
Guardiola added: “Maybe in the second leg I will be crazy and decide to play with nine strikers. But I have trained in this country and I analyzed Leipzig and I need this kind of control.
The city manager gathered the team on the pitch for an impromptu motivational session after the final whistle to try to raise their spirits.
“He had his head down, I said ‘Why do you have your head down, raise your head up,'” the Spanish manager said in his post-match press conference.
“It’s a beautiful game you play. If people don’t like it, it doesn’t matter, you play the way you have to.
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The City manager said the Champions League “used to be very easy”, but is now a “demanding competition”.
“All the teams in the whole league are really strong.”
Leipzig manager Marco Rose told how his half-time speech, which “started quietly and ended up a bit loud”, encouraged the players to stop “playing the City game”.
“I told them ‘what are you doing, coming to a game like this and standing deep – that’s not the plan.’
Rose said he was confident ahead of the second leg in Manchester on March 14, but admitted “to go to City we would have preferred to have a 3-0 advantage to be better.”
“We can take a lot of games so we can’t play in the first half like we are now.”