Manchester City's manager, Roberto Mancini, at the club's pre-season friendly against Limerick in Thomond Park. Photograph: Donall Farmer/Action Images
Surely if Chelsea can win the Champions League, then so canManchester City, who finished 25 points and five places above them in the Premier League last season. The London side face City in Sunday afternoon's Community Shield game at Villa Park by virtue of winning the FA Cup last season – anyone remember that? – though the friendly has now become champions of England versus champions of Europe.
"I think it is difficult for two English teams to win the Champions League two years in a row," says Roberto Mancini, who was still at school in the 70s and early 80s so can be forgiven for missing the period when the European Cup seemed to reside in England. In a literal sense he is right anyway, for though English teams have made successive Champions League finals, since the reorganisation and rebranding of the event in 1993 no country, not even Spain, has provided back to back winners.
"Of course the Champions League will be our target but first we must fight for the title. I think we can make progress in Europe this season. We would certainly like to make it out of the group stage and see how far we can go in the Champions League but putting up a good defence of our league title is the most important priority.
"We were better than Chelsea last year, it is true, though Chelsea have a lot more experience in Europe and I think they deserved to win the Champions League. They may not have won it with their strongest team from the last 10 years, but there have been times in that period when Chelsea were the best team in Europe, so to see them finally achieve their aim was correct, I thought. They were the right team to win, after all their bad luck and near misses over the years, because they kept coming back and in the end managed to make all their experience count."
Mancini's point is that in comparison City are top-level novices, not just in Europe, which just about every English team has found a slow learning process, but at home. The Italian spent most of last season insisting that Manchester United were the favourites for the title and he is not about to change his tune now that a first league championship in 44 years has landed on City's trophy shelf. "Being defending champions is a good position to be in but we will need to work harder than last year to win anything this season," he says.
"We are very confident because, although we only won the title on goal difference, we beat United twice last season and were on top of the table for most of the time but you cannot change your history in two years. It is impossible. It takes much longer than that. We can move in the right direction but that is all we are doing at the moment. For this reason I still say you have to respect United and make them favourites because they have been doing this for 20 years. We have only just arrived."
Mancini is not really going to ease the pressure on himself and his players by attempting to transfer it to his closest rivals but one cannot blame him for trying. He is under a certain amount of internal pressure at the moment due to the apparent inability of the City hierarchy to close a deal with any of his transfer targets, testily referring any queries to Brian Marwood, the club's sporting director, and going public with his belief that the time for a big club to do business is in the first month of the transfer window, not in its last 20 days. While it remains unclear whether City were serious contenders for Robin van Persie's signature, Mancini could do without United unveiling him as a last-minute coup. That would feel like a setback no matter how much faith he has in his own attacking quartet, and it does not take a genius to work out that Van Persie is just the sort of player to make a crucial difference between two teams who ended last season level on points.
"We scored 90 goals last year so I am not too worried about the striking situation," Mancini says. He could always reassimilate Emmanuel Adebayor if he feels the need, though he is adamant he will not be feeling the need and trusts the former Spurs loanee will swiftly find another club. With a bid for Liverpool's Daniel Agger still pending and only minor injury worries to Vincent Kompany, Gareth Barry and Micah Richards to complicate his selection plans this afternoon, City begin the new season looking startlingly similar to the side that finished the last one. Everton fans might be used to that sort of thing but it is quite a novelty at Eastlands. "The supporters will be happy because we won the league, we have a strong team and we have an owner like Sheikh Mansour," Mancini says. Speaking of the owner, he has just broken his summer silence to help clear up some of the mystery surrounding City's non-activity in the transfer market.
"What is important is to maintain last season's good standards," the sheikh said in Abu Dhabi. "We will support the team with a player, or players, but this does not detract from the efficiency and capacity of the current squad, with whom the manager is completely satisfied."
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