It's a decade since Pep Guardiola won the Champions League. If that already feels an absurdly long time for someone widely feted as the greatest active soccer manager, consider that Guardiola hasn't even reached the final across those 10 years despite leading the top teams in Spain, Germany and England in that period. So, can his latest iteration at Manchester City " a relentless, record-shattering team closing in on another English Premier League title " end the wait? Guardiola, at least in public, is trying not to get caught up in the hype. "It's nothing special, nothing different," Guardiola said of the Champions League on Tuesday, a day before City plays Borussia Moenchengladbach in the first leg of the round of 16. Pushed repeatedly about the significance of the Champions League " surely, for example, it is bigger than the English League Cup? " Guardiola used the same old mantra, in a clear attempt to take the pressure off both him and City.

"We're going to play the game tomorrow like we played the last games, and I would say the whole season in all competitions," he said. "Nothing special. It's a football game. Ninety minutes. "We're going to do a good game, to try to continue and get a good result, and afterward think about West Ham (in the Premier League), Saturday, 12:30. That's the target. The same process mentally." It's understandable why Guardiola is trying to keep a lid on expectations, considering the pain City has gone through attempting to become European champion for the first time after years of heavy spending under its Abu Dhabi ownership. Since the Spaniard arrived in 2016, City has been eliminated by Monaco in the last 16, Liverpool then Tottenham in the quarterfinals and then " perhaps most disappointingly " Lyon in a one-legged quarterfinal last season. Guardiola has been accused of overthinking his tactics for knockout games, like when he changed formation to match Lyon's in August " serving only to undermine the strengths of his own team because he was preoccupied by a more limited opponent, at least on paper.