Carragher: Man City have Champions League ‘inferiority complex’ as Micah Richards fears PSG tie

Jamie Carragher believes Manchester City ‘go a bit smaller’ in the Champions League due to a lack of self-belief.

Pep Guardiola‘s side are all-conquering in England and have won four of the last five Premier League titles, but have never won the top European prize despite a stellar and very expensively assembled squad. 

And Liverpool icon Carragher insisted City have an ‘inferiority complex’ in the competition ahead of Monday’s draw for the knockout stages. 

Jamie Carragher has claimed Man City have an ‘inferiority complex’ in the Champions League

Pep Guardiola’s team have never won the Champions League despite dominance in England

He said: ‘They have that inferiority complex, don’t they, in the Champions League. They go a little bit smaller.’ 

Carragher was responding to fellow pundit Micah Richards, a former City defender, worrying about potentially being drawn against French giants Paris Saint-Germain.

Richards had said: ‘You know what’s up with me? It’s now Kylian versus Man City in the last 16… I know what’s happening.’

‘Thierry Henry made a good point off air, saying “if you’re going to win this tournament, you’ve got to play everyone”. (But) playing PSG in the last 16 is not great.’

Manchester City could face Kylian Mbappe and PSG in the last-16 of the Champions League

It is not the first shots fired by Carragher at City in recent weeks. He previously called out the club out for their briefings on Jurgen Klopp’s quotes on City’s ownership.

Having privately briefed that the comments were ‘bordeline xenophobic’, Carragher said in his column that they had ‘descended to the level of the idiots on Twitter‘, while also revealing his own run-ins with City over previous interview requests. 

‘Prior to David Silva’s City departure I wrote how he was one of my favourite ever Premier League players. I wanted to interview Silva before he left English football, well aware of City’s belief that their rivals receive more favourable media coverage,’ he wrote in his Telegraph column. 

‘When told of my request, City’s response was they would grant no such interview to me because ‘I wear red pom poms’. Every ex-player in the media wants their team to win but no other club has reacted to me in this way.’ 

City, as one of the eight group winners, will be drawn against six of the eight runners-up: Club Brugge, Inter Milan, Eintracht Frankfurt, AC Milan, RB Leipzig or PSG.

They cannot face Liverpool because they are also an English side, or Borussia Dortmund, who were in their group.