Man City pulled off a sensational 2-1 win against Real Madrid in the first leg of the Round of 16 in the Champions League. But according to Pep Guardiola, it might be an uphill task to stop the La Liga outfit during the second leg.
The reverse fixture will be played at the Etihad stadium so Man City will have that home advantage but according to Guardiola, Zidane has observed his tactics from the first leg and hence with set up his team accordingly.
“There is not in the world one striker to have the intensity like Gabriel,” the Man City boss said via the club’s official website.
“He is so fast and so good – we decide to play without a proper striker because of the way they defend.
“You have to make the pitch wide – they’re so aggressive and in the first minutes we suffered, but after that, we had more fluidity.
“Zidane is going to look at what we’ve done and will adapt for the second leg. The first 10, 15 minutes it was very difficult, but we played really good. We conceded a goal we shouldn’t have conceded.
“After scoring we found our rhythm and we scored the second.
“Today we are happy but it’s still not over. For our people hopefully, we can do a good performance.
“This club has only been to semi-final. To win at the Bernabeu is brilliant and we hope it will help us in the future to believe in ourselves.”
Real Madrid will be without Sergio Ramos for the second leg after the player picked up a red card on Wednesday and this could be a key advantage for Man City. But at the same time, Guardiola could miss Aymeric Laporte for this match which in hindsight could be a much bigger problem for the Spanish manager.
