Pep Guardiola should come and manage in England one day, says Manuel Pellegrini
- Manuel Pellegrini and Pep Guardiola will clash again on Tuesday
- Guardiola has 18 months left on his contract at Bayern Munich and has long been linked with a move to the Premier League
- If Manchester City lose to Bayern they will be out of the Champions League
- City beat Swansea 2-1 on Saturday while Bayern beat Hoffenheim 4-0
Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini has said it would be 'very good' for Champions League rival Pep Guardiola to manage one day in the Premier League.
Pellegrini faces Guardiola on Tuesday night with the Bayern Munich manager tipped in some quarters to be his eventual successor at The Etihad due to his previous working relationship at Barcelona with City executives Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain.
Far from baulking at the mention of Guardiola's name, Pellegrini has heaped praise on his counterpart and said he could see the benefits for the Bayern boss of working in England at some point.
VIDEO Scroll down to watch Bayern Munich 4-0 Hoffenheim match highlights
Pep Guardiola showed the full range of his emotions as Bayern Munich beat Hoffenheim 4-0 on Saturday
Manuel Pellegrini's side warmed up for Bayern Munich with a 2-1 win over Swansea
Steven Jovetic celebrates scoring Manchester City's first goal against Swansea on Saturday
Yaya Toure (centre) scored the winning goal against Swansea in City's 2-1 win
'I cannot read what will happen in the future but I am sure if sometime he arrives here, he will be a very important manager as he was in Barcelona and now at Bayern Munich. But it is impossible for me to know,' said Pellegrini.
Asked if he though Guardiola would come to the Premier League, the City boss replied: 'Maybe, yes. I think it will be very good for him and very good for the Premier League also. But I cannot talk for Pep Guardiola.
'I think Pep always gives a style of play to all his teams. Maybe the players are not the same so Barcelona and Bayern Munich do not play exactly the same. But they are always very attractive teams and very offensive teams that likes to have high possession of the ball.
'I think that Pep is a very good manager, he demonstrated what he did in Barcelona and now at Bayern Munich but I think the most important thing for us is to try to make a very good game against a great team.'
Guardiola's contract in Germany has another 18 months to run and he is likely to be coveted by every major team in Europe afterwards, including Arsenal and Manchester United if they have vacancies.
Jerome Boateng celebrates scoring the winner against Manchester City when the teams met in September
Joe Hart was left helpless as Boateng (not pictured) scored the only goal in Bayern's 1-0 win over City
Tuesday night represents a huge match for Pellegrini who was hired to replace Roberto Mancini in 2013 partly due to his success in taking unfashionable Malaga to the last eight of the Champions League.
Ironically the Chilean's greatest success at City so far has come in domestic competitions, winning the Premier League and Capital One Cup last season.
City crashed out in the last-16 of the competition last season and have collected only two points from four games in their group games in this campaign.
Defeat against Bayern will end their Champions League hopes and Pellegrini says he is putting more pressure on himself than the owners are applying to avoid that happening.
'My own pressure to continue to the next round is an important pressure – more maybe than the owners,' he said.
'Of course I think we must be in the next stage. A lot of times you don’t reach the target you are supposed to do but that is the way to sit down and think about what happened. I repeat, I will do that after we know if we are not in the next stage.
Polish striker Robert Lewandowski rises to double Bayern Munich's lead just before the half-time break
Arjen Robben (centre) made it 3-0 to Bayern late in the second half against Hoffenheim
'If we don’t continue to the round of 16 then of course it is a step back but we have to play two more games and we will see what happens in those games. After that I can answer, not at this moment.'
Pellegrini's hopes aren't helped by missing Yaya Toure and Fernandinho on Tuesday due to their red cards against CSKA Moscow in their previous European games. David Silva, Aleksandr Kolarov and Edin Dzeko are also currently injured.
In addition, the City boss has been hamstrung by Uefa restrictions on squad size and spending power due to the club breaching financial fair play regulations.
It led to Pellegrini allowing striker Alvaro Negredo out on loan.
'We had a lot of restrictions, we cannot have more than 21 players in the Champions League squad. It is a lot of things but it is not my way to use all these things to excuse bad results. We have a squad, we have the reality of what happened this year and have to work that way.'
Bayern have already qualified for the knockout stages and are favourites with Barcelona and Real Madrid to the win the Champions League, boasting star names like Arjen Robben, Franck Ribery, Robert Lewandowski and World Cup winners Mario Goetze, Manuel Neuer and Thomas Muller. Captain Philippe Lahm is out though with a long-term injury.
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