An enormous challenge for Real Madrid

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“Compete, fight and have confidence,” Carlo Ancelotti proclaimed this Tuesday, in advance of a huge challenge for Real Madrid, beating Manchester City at home in the Champions League quarter-final tie after a 3-3 win at the Bernabéu. In recent days, the Italian's invocation of great collective values ​​has been constant. “Courage, personality and attitude,” he had claimed in the previous days. The coach appealed to all of this, whose eleven only presents the doubt of Nacho or Militão to replace the suspended Tchouameni in the center of defense. The captain starts with a clear advantage, since the Brazilian has accumulated less than 10 minutes after returning from the serious cruciate injury. In the English team, Pep Guardiola brings back Kevin de Bruyne and Ederson compared to the first leg, and also has the recently recovered Kyle Walker and Nathan Aké.

“We have to do better than at the Bernabéu. I want to play in a way that we deserve to be in the semifinals. Neither we are going to impose ourselves for 90 minutes nor are they going to do so. The feeling of danger with Madrid is always there. "They know that we will go for the game," analyzed Guardiola, who saved Stones, Rodrigo, Bernardo Silva and Foden at the weekend, in which he regained the lead in the Premier League.

If City played last season with pain in their stomach from the astonishing comeback they suffered the previous year at the Bernabéu, Madrid returns today to the scene of the crime of its most spectacular defeat in recent decades (4-0). The memory of that night, in which it was liquefied from beginning to end, dominated the atmosphere of the previous one.

There is only one stadium that Madrid has done worse than the Etihad, where it has not won any of the five times it has gone (three losses and two initial draws). It is the former home of Bayern, the fearsome Olympian of Munich (only once in eight duels did they not lose). That break can no longer be fixed for the whites because the Bavarian team left there two decades ago. The dispute with the City venue, on the other hand, remains open – at its most effervescent – ​​and the return of the quarterfinals is presented as the sixth opportunity to jump over the wall. In the last two visits, they conceded four goals on each occasion: 4-3 and 4-0.

City's service record in its lair tempers the spirits of the most optimistic. They have not fallen in the Champions League since September 2019 (1-2 against Ferland Mendy's Lyon) and in the following 30 games they have only conceded two draws against minor rivals (Shakhtar in November 2019 and Sporting de Portugal in March 2022). Citizen's streak of consecutive victories at home in Europe extends to 12. The challenge, then, is enormous for a Madrid that on a day-to-day basis has shown itself to be very reliable and has only had two defeats this season. Now it's time for the City test, the champion, another level.

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