Can Pep Guardiola Overcome Monaco?

Rarely a game has passed in the competition this season without the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach shaking his head and calling for patience by reminding anybody who wants to listen that City’s lack of European pedigree counts against them when facing the Champions League elite.

Yet this is a serial winner, a man who is also quick to remind the world that he won “21 titles in seven years” before arriving at City last summer, so it seemed counterintuitive for Guardiola to throw a wet blanket over any suggestion that his new team can not only rub shoulders with Barca, Bayern and Real Madrid, but beat them to the biggest prize in club football.

The pretence evaporated in the news conference room of the Stade Louis II in Monaco on Tuesday, however, when Guardiola was asked whether City could win the Champions League this season.

He began with a long-winded and confusing answer, returning to the theme of other clubs being more experienced in the rarified atmosphere of the competition, but by the time the translator had finished delivering his answer in French, Guardiola remembered what he is really all about. Winning.

“Can we win it? I don’t know,” said Guardiola. “I would like to think about it or say yes, but I don’t know.

“It’s my eighth year as a coach and I know how complicated the competition is — set pieces and free kicks, losing five minutes of concentration and you’re out. But you can be sure that we are going to try. This season? Absolutely.”

Guardiola has a three-year contract at the Etihad Stadium and there is an expectation within City’s Abu Dhabi hierarchy that the club will become serious contenders to win the Champions League during that period.

But there is no time like the present and, for all the talk of “projects,” few teams can choose the time and place that success is achieved.

City may be striving towards winning the Champions League under Guardiola, but Leicester City had a three-year plan to secure European football following promotion to the Premier League in 2014 and they managed it in two years, by winning the Premier League. So City should regard this season as their best chance of winning the Champions League, because the building blocks are being helped into place by shifting sands elsewhere.

Success and domination come and go in cycles and while Barcelona’s 6-5 aggregate victory over Paris Saint-Germain was a story for the ages, Luis Enrique’s team are not the force of old, as their 4-0 first-leg defeat in Paris attests.

Real Madrid are weakened by the visible decline of Cristiano Ronaldo, while Bayern Munich’s 10-2 round-of-16 aggregate win over Arsenal masked the problems within Carlo Ancelotti’s squad of ageing stars and a centre-half pairing in Mats Hummels and Javi Martinez, whose lack of pace would set alarm bells ringing against the likes of Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling.

Borussia Dortmund are a genuine attacking force under Thomas Tuchel, but their frailties are why they are currently six points off second spot in the Bundesliga. Atletico Madrid and Juventus have arrived at this stage of the competition having conceded just four and two goals respectively in the Champions League, but City would fancy their chances against both.

Quite simply, there is no outstanding team in this season’s Champions League and City, as unreliable as they are defensively, possess the firepower to beat any rival.

By winning last month’s first leg against Monaco 5-3 at the Etihad, City showcased their attacking strengths and defensive weaknesses, just as they did when winning and losing against Barcelona during the group stages.

Under Guardiola, they average 2.43 goals a game in the Champions League this season — Barca top the charts with an average of 3.25 that was boosted by the 6-1 win against PSG — and are a growing team with Sane, Sterling and the currently injured Gabriel Jesus developing a formidable attacking force.

They must iron out their defensive issues, but Porto upset the odds to win the Champions League under Jose Mourinho in 2004, Liverpool did so 12 months later and Mourinho once again led an unfancied Inter Milan to glory in 2010. All of those successes were achieved in seasons when European football was without a dominant force and this campaign could be a similar story.

City simply need to believe in themselves and, with two-time Champions League winner Guardiola at the helm, they will not lack conviction from the top. But there is a belief around Europe that the Manchester club are burdened by an inferiority complex — an assertion thrown at Guardiola with the first question of the news conference from a French journalist.

“Complex?” said Guardiola. “Obviously we don’t have the long history of other clubs and if we go through tomorrow, it will only be the second time in the club’s history that it will be in the quarterfinals.

“We had a good group stage, showed a lot last year under Manuel [Pellegrini], but I am not thinking about a complex.

“We must just focus on what we have to do. You are talking about a complex, but we have shown a good performance against Barcelona and Borussia Monchengladbach in the group stage and we are here because we deserve to be here.”

City certainly deserve to be here, battling it out against Monaco for a place in the last eight, but make no mistake: Guardiola expects them to go much further than the quarterfinals.