Pep Guardiola, manager of Manchester City, was understandably happy in reaching the Champions League semi-final for a third season in a row.
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Manchester City have reached yet another Champions League semi-final after getting past Bayern Munich in the quarter-final. The Premier League champions won the first leg at Etihad Stadium 3-0 before securing a 1-1 draw in Germany. It is the third time in a row they have reached the last-four stage of this competition. Even though Man City were not at their brilliant best like the first leg, they did the required job on Wednesday night to seal the tie with a 4-1 aggregate win.
Pep Guardiola, manager of Manchester City, was understandably happy in reaching the Champions League semi-final for a third season in a row. Despite the aggregate result showing a comfortable one-sided tie, Guardiola knows very well that was not the case on the pitch. “I’m so happy for three years in a row to be in the Champions League semi-finals,” Guardiola was quoted as saying by their club’s website. “To be honest, the result of 4-1 doesn’t show what was really in the two games from my point of view.
“I couldn’t expect anything different knowing how good they are, the physicality and ideas of Bayern Munich. I was impressed when I lived with them and I was impressed when I play against them. But in this competition it’s the details. Last season in the semi-final of the Champions League we lived the opposite part and in the right moments in these two games, we were there. We were incredibly solid because we defended really well in the boxes and this is the area we have improved the most comparing to previous seasons.”
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Guardiola was extremely in the way his players controlled the proceedings in the second half when Bayern Munich was pushing for goals. “We controlled it better in the second half from minute one. The only regret is that we didn’t have more sequence of passes so we could finish quicker. But knowing the quality of our opponent, congratulations to all at Manchester City, thank you to our fans and now we rest and play on Saturday our FA cup semi-final [against Sheffield United],” he explained.
Next up for Manchester City is another mouth-watering tie against defending champions Real Madrid in the semi-finals. They were eliminated by Real in the same stage of last year’s competition. “I heard that they have reached 11 semi-finals in 13 years – so hat’s off [to them]. We are three and what we have done is incredible to reach the Champions League semi-final. I think all the clubs in the world have the feeling if you want to win this competition you have to beat Real Madrid right now. Before it used to be Barcelona but now it’s Real Madrid,” he explained.
