Can Manchester City complete the treble - titles at the English Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League - again this year? This is the question on every European football afficionado's mind as Pep Guardiola's team marches on in the 2023-24 season, well placed in the Premier League and handed a favourable Round Of 16 match-up in the UEFA Champions League - against Copenhagen. (More Football News)
Guardiola himself has chosen to play down the prospect, ruling out the likelihood of an unprecedented back-to-back treble. "This is a fairy tale, it's more complicated than that," he said when asked about the chances of his side doing a historic encore of last year's triple triumph.
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He added: "We have a 99.99% possibility that we are not going to win the treble because never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever has anyone done it. If it was easy, another team -- Manchester United in that time -- would do it again. It's not easy. Everything is so difficult in this business, what we did in the past doesn't guarantee anything."
But fans continue to dream, and as long as Man City stay in contention in all three competitions, the dream will stay alive. As far as the Champions League is concerned, they are favourites to defend the title, according to former player Mark Seagraves.
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"Having (Kevin) de Bruyne and (Erling) Haaland back after lengthy injuries, especiialy de Bruyne... It's absolutely fantastic for them. Yes, they are the favourites.
"It hasn't been a perfect season for them in the Premier League, but now all of a sudden they find themselves two points off the top (Liverpool lead the table with 54 points from 24 games, while City have 52 from 23 outings)," the football pundit said in an interaction with a select group of journalists.
Seagraves called City's fixture against Copenhagen "the easiest tie of all the ties", and expected City to go through. "There's an awful lot of big names still in the round of 16. Manchester City, in my opinion, are very much the favourites to retain the trophy... They only have to have a good couple of nights to get through to the final and see where it takes them," he said.
In the first leg of their UCL round of 16 tie, City travel to Copenhagen for an away game at Parken Stadium on Wednesday, February 14 at 1:30am IST (late Tuesday night). The second leg will witness Copenhagen travelling to Etihad Stadium for the return fixture on March 7.
Watch the live coverage of UEFA Champions League 2023-24 round of 16 on Sony Sports Ten 2 SD and HD, Sony Sports Ten 3 SD and HD (Hindi), Sony Sports Ten 4 SD & HD (Tamil and Telugu), and on the Sonyliv app and website.
