Busquets: The 2011 Champions League final was the best game of the Guardiola era Barcelona Manchester United lost two finals in three years

Ernesto Valverde has been tasked with improving on Barcelona's relatively poor recent record in the Champions League, and with Manchester United on the horizon Sergio Busquets has admitted that the 2011 Champions League final victory over the Reds was the best game of the Pep Guardiola era.

Busquets was one of the revelations of Guardiola's time at the Camp Nou, essentially reinventing a defensive midfield role that many teams have since attempted to copy.

"It was the best game of the Pep era," Busquets told The Guardian.

"It was the match where our superiority was the most overwhelming.

"It was the perfect demonstration of how we wanted to play."

Manchester United head into Wednesday's quarter-final in the rather bizarre position of wondering just how they ended up there.

A 2-0 defeat at home to Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg of the round of 16 had all but left Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's charges out of the competition, yet a miracle at the Parc des Princes has set up a mammoth tie with the Blaugrana, and Busquets is certainly wary of the English club.

"Manchester United are much better under Solskjaer," he admitted.

"They don't mind letting you have the ball, their opponents might be better technically but, as we saw with PSG, they counterattack well.

"They're good at set pieces, if you make any mistakes, they'll take advantage."

When pressed on the best time at Barcelona throughout his career, the midfield was somewhat non-committal and instead preferred to point out the differing natures of the teams he's been a part of.

"It's difficult to say because teams are better prepared at all levels - physical, tactical, mental and players are different now," he confirmed.

"I think the best era was with Pep, but football isn't the same now, it's evolved.

"You can't compare what we do now with what we did then, before it was a very clear 4-3-3-; now it's 4-3-3 but sometimes 4-4-2, I like the 4-3-3 we had before more, but with our players, we can play any system."