Every Word from Pep Guardiola's Pre-Napoli Press Conference

Pep Guardiola sat down to speak to the media ahead of Manchester City's 25/26 Champions League opening game against Napoli at the Etihad. This fixture will see the return of Kevin De Bruyne, who unsurprisingly was the topic of the first question.

On if Pep is looking forward to catching up with De Bruyne:

"After the game yeah! It's not a surprise, players at that level adapt so quick. They don't need much time to adapt and perform well."

On Donnarumma:

"In the last decade we have always had incredible keepers. Ederson made an incredible job, and the other keepers that helped us as well.

Gigi comes for many years at 26 years old and of course he is a top class keeper."

On the busy fixture schedule:

"Priority is the next game, always has been since I arrived here. You do not chose competitions. In 10 days Huddersfield will be the most important one. We take seriously every single game."

On if he's surprised by how well McTominay has done in Serie A:

"No [I'm not surprised], he has really good conditions [in Naples]. It was a team that won the Serie A and when you win it means every player is always performing to his maximum level."

On if Manchester City are contenders to win the Champions League this season:

"Apparently we are not! Just enjoy the moment, we are happy to be here after the path we have been [on] so we are just focusing on tomorrow and the game we have to play and starting well in this competition.

We have more games than the previous seasons but if you start with a bad result it can be difficult, last season we drew the first game against Inter and hopefully we can do better."

🔵 Pep Guardiola: “I would say in the last decade always we've had incredible keepers”.

“Ederson made an incredible job, and the other keepers that helped us as well”.

“Gigio, with his age at 26, comes for many years, and of course he's a top class keeper!”. pic.twitter.com/sWBR3Sv9kK

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) September 17, 2025

On if Haaland is a future Manchester City captain:

"It is a question of time as normal. In the first season he came into a team that was winning a lot - except in the Champions League - and he helped to bring that incredible trophy for us.

Last season we finished the last 15 to 20 games as the best team in the Premier League and were able to qualify, but as always it is tough and of course it is a question of maturity over time, he is a little bit older even though he is still young.

He signed a contract for many years to be here and he is a figure in the locker room so it happened in the natural way."