Manchester City won 4-3 against Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champions at the Etihad stadium.
But Pep Guardiola believes his side must improve on their first leg performance if they won’t qualify for the finals of the Champions League.
The Citizens will seek to qualify for their second consecutive final of the Champions League on Wednesday when they meet Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu.
What did Pep Guardiola say?
Speaking at his press conference ahead of Wednesday’s semi-final second leg at the Bernabeu, City boss Guardiola said: “Yes, probably we will have to be better (than in leg one to go through).
“But at the same time I would like to tell you one thing – we could play much, much worse than we played and we could win, and not anyone can deny my assessment is right.
“So nobody knows, football is unpredictable. Sometimes you get something you don’t deserve, sometimes you don’t get something you deserve, for the effort, for many things.”
When quizzed whether he would deploy the same tactics he used in the first leg, He said: “There is no guarantee the same guys will play the same way,” he stated.
“I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. We try to win the game with the best XI possible. We saw the game and there are things we want to improve. We will try to do it.”
Pep Guardiola also urged Manchester City to learn from Last season’s Champions League experience.
When asked in his pre-match press conference about how that taste of semi-final success in 2021 will benefit his players against the newly crowned Spanish champions, Pep said: “The question is what did you learn from this experience? Every game in this competition is different. It’s difficult to compare last season to tomorrow.
“It’s about how the guys wake up, what their mood is, and how they perform. We have been there – and we have been there quite often – that is good. We know how to handle it. It helps. But there is no guarantee we will play well. We have to perform our best to reach the final.”
The Spaniard was full of praise for Carlo Ancelotti. The Real Madrid manager become the first coach to win a league title in the five Europe major League(Premier League, Spanish La Liga, the Italian Serie A, The French Ligue 1, and the German Bundesliga) and he is also one of only three managers to have won the Champions League three times and one of only two to have managed teams in four finals.
He said: “I admire him. He has been all around the world in the biggest football countries with fantastic teams, and everywhere he always did an incredible job.
“His football is always really good. He is an exceptional person. He is a calm person and he can control his emotions and his team expresses perfectly who he is.”
Football Fans around the world would glue to their TV set to watch the game between arguably the two best in Europe.