Aguero One Of The Best
Thursday, 27th Nov 2014 09:26

Despite being snubbed in Uefa's list of the best players of 2014,Samir Nasri has claimed he is second only to Cristiano Ronaldo as the world's best striker. Aguero's three-goal haul against Bayern Munich on Tuesday single-handedly revived City's Champions League hopes. He scored twice in the last five minutes as the English champions came from behind to beat the 10-man Germans 3-2 in a dramatic finale at the Etihad Stadium.

Aguero has now scored 17 goals in 18 appearances this season.

"Ronaldo may be on another planet, but Sergio is up there with [Lionel] Messi and [Luis] Suarez," Nasri said of the Argentina international.

"He always delivers in a difficult moment. I think I don't need to speak about his performance. The stats speak for themselves. He is a great player and when he's on his day, he is unstoppable and, against Bayern, we needed him. At the moment he's one of the best players in the world."

Aguero's hat-trick came on the day that Uefa announced its 40-man shortlist for Team of the Year. Sergio's City team-mates Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta and Yaya Toure have been named on the shortlist, but Aguero's absence is bemusing, with the Salzburg forward Jonathan Soriano one of the more surprising nominees ahead of the former Atletico Madrid striker.

Nasri told the reporters "Every big team has a great goalkeeper and a great goalscorer, you have to have that, but this year Sergio has been unbelievable. It was the same last year but then he got his injury. This year he's fitter. And when he's one-on-one with the keeper, you don't see him miss the target."

Despite Roma winning seven of their last eight Champions League matches Nasri insists that the oppurtunity to progress in this year's competition was firmly in his team mates hands.

"Now we have to confirm it in Rome," Nasri said. "We have to win there if we want to qualify and we'll still depend on CSKA in Munich. It's a miracle to still have a chance when we only had two points with two games left. The Bayern game was a miracle, too.

"We made some adjustments in the second half, we played better. But now we have to win in Rome - otherwise all of this doesn't count. In two weeks we'll see.

"We showed great team spirit and hopefully this will give us a lift and we can take it to Rome. We have the quality - but it's always like this with Manchester City, the last minute - even when we won the league. But it's special and it's fantastic for us."

Photo: Action Images

Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.