Manchester City: Manuel Akanji says club can 'beat every team in Europe'
2025-01-30
Category: sports

Manchester City defender Manuel Akanji says his side can "beat every team in Europe" after qualifying for the Champions League play-off round.Pep Guardiola's side survived a scare to beat Club Brugge 3-1 on Wednesday and set up a knockout tie against either Bayern Munich or Real Madrid.Defeat would have meant a shock elimination for City and Switzerland defender Akanji, 29, says the club are "happy we made it to the play-offs"."Obviously we wish we would have made it to the top eight but we couldn't change it," said Akanji."[Bayern and Real] are not the teams you want to face but whoever it is we're looking forward to the challenge and I think we can beat every team in Europe."City's form has been inconsistent this season compared to the high standards they have set in recent campaigns.They let a three-goal lead slip in a 3-3 draw with Feyenoord in November and lost 4-2 to Paris St-Germain earlier this month despite having been 2-0 up.Previous defeats by Sporting and Juventus left the club needing victory against Club Brugge to progress to the next stage."Obviously we had a couple of results that were way under our expectations, so we had to win to get into the next round," Akanji said."That wasn't the way that we wanted it to be but here we are right now and I'm still confident we can beat whoever comes next."The draw for the knockout phase play-offs takes place on Friday, 31 January at 11:00 GMT.Teams already know which sides they have a 50-50 chance of meeting because of their final positions in the league phase.One of Celtic and City will play reigning champions Real, with the other taking on fellow giants Bayern.Teams also know the two possible clubs they could face in the last 16 if they progress through the play-offs.The winner of the ties involving City and Celtic will take on either Atletico Madrid or Bayer Leverkusen in the last 16.