Josep Guardiola has urged his team, Manchester City, to hurt and destroy Real Madrid when the two teams meet in the Champions League.
Man City will visit Los Blancos’ headquarters in the first leg of the 2023/24 Champions League quarter-finals. The hot duel between the two teams will be held at the Santiago Bernabeu, Tuesday (9/4/2024).
This is the third consecutive season the two clubs have met in the knockout stages, with Real Madrid staging a stunning comeback to win the 2022 semi-finals and Man City avenging that defeat 12 months later.
“It’s the same manager, but we have new players and they also have new players, so it will be a completely different game,” said Guardiola.
Guardiola then became wary of Real Madrid, who he said were very difficult to beat when playing in front of their supporters. He predicted that the opponent would appear pressing from the moment the kick off whistle sounded.
“We had a slight advantage with the second leg at home, where we played strong and very confident, but we had to play 90 minutes here and the game lasted a long time for different reasons,” said Guardiola.
“They will be able to press with high intensity, very aggressive, very dangerous. Everyone knows their strength and they have incredible speed.”
Guardiola believes that Man City and Real Madrid are at the same level. And the former Barcelona coach asked his team to take the initiative and he wanted to see his opponent suffer in this match.
“We can’t come here just to control the game. We have to come here to try to hurt them, to punish them, to make them feel that we are here and scoring goals. That’s what we have to do.
“But we are talking about Real Madrid, which has the ability to control many aspects of the game. We have to impose our game as it is,” added the Spanish coach.
Then, Guardiola was asked by The Citizens whether they were able to repeat the beautiful story of last season when they were able to beat Los Blancos twice.
“It’s difficult because beating Real Madrid twice in the same way is almost impossible. Beating them once in this competition is difficult, imagine twice in a row.
“They are learning, they have pride, we have to try to be smart with the game we play tomorrow and see what happens in the second leg,” he said.
Man City went to Spain without bringing a complete squad with Kyle Walker and Nathan Ake suffering injuries so both of them were confirmed to be absent.
Meanwhile, Josko Gvardiol has been included in the squad but is doubtful due to a foot problem.
