On Erling Haaland, who Glasner faced previously in the Bundesliga…
I know him longer! I knew of him when he was in Austria.
In German we say he's a scoring machine, he's just happy when he scores goals. He has such a fantastic attitude and runs and going for goals and movements in the box. He's physically strong, he's fast, he's finishing very quick – very often just one touch with his left foot – and the head.
He’s the same as all the other players, so I think we can't defend him one against one. When you want to defend them one against one, it's almost impossible over 90 or 95 minutes, so we have to close the spaces as a team. This is what we were talking about, what we were training, and then what's important to show tomorrow.
Haaland has excellent runs in the gaps and therefore he always gets the passes, especially from their midfielders. When they are in the pocket in front of your back line and they can turn, and then they have the quality… but it doesn't matter who, all these players, if they can turn in front of your back line or they make pressure with the ball at your back line, and they find the right moment of passing, they have the right timing of passing and Haaland has a run… we have to avoid it, that their players can turn in front of our back line and then, yeah, then it's a little bit easier.
Of course, they also play some long balls behind your line when you are very tight, and you have to deal with [Ruben] Dias and Rodri, who find their players, but this is what we have to deal with. We accept it.
This week we were more talking about us and what we have to do, than talk about Erling Haaland. Everybody knows that they [City] won four titles last season.
They are the best team in the world if they won the Champions League and the Club World Cup. It’s self-evident they are a good team, and so we respect this of course, but we don't have influence on their starting eleven – so we can't tell them play with eight players!
We have to concentrate on us, what we have to do to defend against them so that we don't give them space, and – this is what we were focusing on – where we have our opportunities to score goals, to create goals, so that they have to think ‘ah, we have to be aware because they are waiting for this.'
This was our focus in the last three days.