Pep Guardiola insists the drive for team honours and not individual awards is what’s most important in football as he hailed Erling Haaland’s immense contribution to City holding the ‘Big Five’.

City won the Treble of Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League across 2022/23 with Haaland scoring a record-breaking 52 goals across the board and a competition-high 36 in the English top-flight.

We’ve since added the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup to our trophy cabinet, meaning we are now in possession of the most illustrious quintet of club honours in the game.

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This season, Haaland tops the Premier League scoring charts again, with 19 goals, but he didn’t find the net in the 3-3 draw with Real Madrid this past week with Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher claiming that Haaland must add more to his game, especially to be considered a contender for personal gongs like the Ballon d’Or.

Guardiola leapt to his forward’s defence and said he was far more interested in picking up silverware for City.

“The target is not to win the Ballon d’Or,” said Pep.

“The target is to win the Premier Leagues, Champions Leagues, FA Cups and Carabao Cups. And he did it.

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“Without him, it would not be possible. What we won in 2023 five titles without him it’s impossible. No chance. He’s a key player for us.

“He will improve because of his desire, his age, more games, more experience, arrive in the latter stages of the competition, it’s never happened in his career.

“This will be his future.”

Looking back at Haaland’s performance in that epic quarter-final first leg at the Bernabeu, Guardiola insisted that playing striker in the modern game is the ‘most difficult position on the pitch’ because it’s often one forward versus two defenders – and it was a duo of elite, experienced centre-halves in the Madrid v City tie in Aurelien Tchouameni and Antonio Rudiger.

“We scored three goals. We had two central defenders close to him, really close to him, it’s not easy,” added the manager.

“The most difficult position on the pitch is a striker.

“Every player have one player. You have two against one with striker.

“He has two players and they were so tight and really good defenders.

“That’s Madrid and most of the teams. It is the most difficult position.”