Pep Guardiola says Manchester City are not good enough to win the Champions League.
The City manager’s surprise admission came after his side battled back from a goal down with 10 men to beat Schalke 3-2 in their last-16 first leg clash on Wednesday.
Sergio Aguero’s opener was cancelled out by two penalties from former Tottenham midfielder Nabil Bentaleb, the first of which was controversially awarded by VAR.
Nicolas Otamendi’s 68th-minute red card made the visitors’ task even harder before late strikes from Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling secured an unlikely win.
City are one of the favourites to win the Champions League this season, but Guardiola downplayed their chances.
He told BT Sport: “It was a great result. We gave the first penalty, we gave the second penalty, we got the red card so that competition is not good. We are still not ready to fight in the latter stages.
“We started really well but we lost some easy balls when you can’t do that in this competition.
“We conceded two penalties and they were penalties. I trust VAR, I’m a big fan of it, so if it is a penalty, it is a penalty.
“I have arguments and complain sometimes, but not with these ones. It’s a penalty for the first one and it’s a penalty for the second one.
“In the second-half we played an incredible personality, like last season at Anfield. We gave two goals, they had zero shots on target (apart from the penalties).
“The game was quite good, the quality from Leroy and big players win games. The action from Raz (Raheem Sterling) made the difference.
“It’s not over. I like to leave these kind of situations to realise that this competition is completely different. We gave too much to our opponent to still be in the game.”