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Real Madrid has gone through the group stage of this Champions League as a kind of gold standard against which the teams they came across were measured.
He first calibrated the desire of Paris Saint-Germain and the lavish project with which they insist on bringing an Orejona to their windows, and with which they try to convince Kylian Mbappé not to leave France.
Later he measured the stature of the last champion, Chelsea, and tonight he begins to assess the shaft of Manchester City, the other great rich crazy about joining the aristocracy of the European Cup.
Given this perspective, Pep Guardiola, coach of the English team, preferred to lower the scale of what will collide tonight at the Etihad (9:00 p.m., Movistar Champions League).
“If we were running against history, we wouldn't stand a chance,” he said.
“But in the end it is a match of eleven against eleven.
Neither Carlo [Ancelotti] nor I are going to win this.
They are the players."
On the other bench, the Italian coach did not want to leave aside the weight of the past: “Real Madrid's history in this competition counts for a lot.
More for us than for our rivals: this story helps the players to feel the weight of the shirt, a weight that is positive, not negative”.
Some of that showed in the comebacks of the previous rounds, against PSG and Chelsea, in which Guardiola detected one of the distinctive features of Madrid: "They have players with a package... What I like the most, above all, is that, in the difficulty, with a 0-3, there are players who raise their finger and say 'here I am'.
That is the greatest learning that we have to take with us.
At 0-3, the ball burns for some, but not for them,” he said.
Off the field, the coaches chose where to start the tie, while inside they have weaker defenses against the opponent's best weapons.
The day he will need to disable one of the most sophisticated midfielders, Ancelotti believes that he will not be able to count on his best artificer in that area, not yet recovered from a muscle injury.
“We have some doubts about Alaba, but more doubts about Casemiro.
We have much more confidence with Alaba than with Casemiro ”, he revealed, and almost ruled him out when he said that in the line-up he only had to decide between Rodrygo and Camavinga.
Guardiola's problems are announced on his right wing, where he does not have any of his canonical full-backs: Stones and Walker, injured, did not train yesterday (at least in the public part), and Cancelo is sanctioned.
And that is where he punishes Vinicius Jr., a nightmare, for example, of Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
With these uncertainties in their protective shields, a fight to reach the final in Paris between history and desire begins tonight in Manchester.
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