The blue half of Manchester reached the title match after overcoming Real Madrid with a 5-1 aggregate win in the semi-finals.
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Manchester City are just one game away from ending the season with an illustrious treble. Pep Guardiola’s side have already won two trophies this campaign. Despite being second in the Premier League for most parts of the season, City kept pushing Arsenal till the end to finally leapfrog them and lift the league crown. They followed it up by beating Manchester United in a hard-fought contest to get their hands on the FA Cup trophy.
Next up is a Champions League final against Inter Milan awaiting Manchester City. The blue half of Manchester reached the title match after overcoming Real Madrid with a 5-1 aggregate win in the semi-finals. Man City’s midfield maestro Bernardo Silva provided an insight into Pep Guardiola’s message ahead of the win over Madrid. “The main message that he passes to us in these matches, not only against Real Madrid, but in this match against Real Madrid, because we’re in a semi-final of the Champions League, and because last year we had a match with them where they knocked us out in a strange way,” he was quoted as saying by the club’s website.
“It was tough for us to accept it, so we have to understand that we can lose because we’re playing against one of the best teams in the world, but we have to reach the end of the tie and have no regrets. We have to reach the end of the tie with no regrets, knowing that we did everything we could possibly do to have the best chance to reach the final.”
Bernardo Silva also spoke about how they tried to be themselves and enjoy the occasion. “We have to be yourselves, have ball possession, apply high pressure, control the match, and create more chances to score. And if we did that, we knew that we would be a little bit closer to our final objective, knowing that we would be playing against a great team, but also enjoying the moment, because playing a semi-final in the Champions League is special,” he explained.
He added: “Reaching these moments is always very tough, so if you don’t seize it and enjoy it, you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to do it again. And I also think that you’ll get a little bit further from your objective because when you do things with enjoyment, you do them better.”
The Portuguese midfielder then spoke about how difficult it was for Manchester City to find consistency during the season. “This has been a difficult season, because 90% of the season, to start with, we were always behind Arsenal and we couldn’t win four or five matches in a row. So we couldn’t get that momentum of confidence, of thinking: okay, now we’re unstoppable. Because, when you start winning five, six, seven matches in a row, you get that feeling that you’re unstoppable. And it’s difficult to stop a team when they have this feeling. Any team, not just us,” he said.
In the end, he felt that the two victories over Arsenal in the Premier League were crucial. “And this past year, it was always like, one, two, three matches and then we’d draw or lose. That ended up creating a feeling of lack of confidence within the team. And I think, especially after the World Cup, there was a moment of reflection, and even after coming back at first, those first games weren’t easy, but the away win over Arsenal was very important,” he added.
“It made us believe again that we can win important matches. And in the moment that we won over Arsenal at home, it was approximately at the same time when we knocked out Bayern Munich from the Champions League, it ended up being a very important moment. Because we got first place in the Premier League and got to the semi-finals by eliminating one of the best teams in the world.”
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