Guardiola says City have little chance of overturning deficit but will give their all
Real Madrid coach Alvaro Arbeloa is adamant that his side won’t celebrate their 3-0 victory over Manchester City in the first leg of their Champions League last 16 tie.
Madrid smashed City at the Santiago Bernabeu after Federico Valverde netted the most thrilling of hat-tricks to leave the English side close to the edge. There is little chance of City overturning the lead, as Pep Guardiola himself admitted afterwards, but Arbeloa believes a team at Madrid’s level should save their excitement for something bigger.
“We celebrate titles in this club, not victories that haven’t taken us anywhere,” Arbeloa said. “We are in the middle of the playoff. We have won 3-0 but if we relax a bit, we will pay for it. We have to be prepared for another battle in Manchester.”
Madrid hosted the Premier League’s second-best team without the injured Kylian Mbappe, Rodrygo, Jude Bellingham, Alvaro Carreras and Eder Militao.
“People expected us to get battered tonight but it just shows our mentality,” right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold said. “We executed the game-plan perfectly. When you get to knockout football in the Champions League anyone can beat anyone.”
Valverde’s hat-trick came within 22 minutes in the first half, interestingly following a spell when City had been dominant. Vinicius Junior also missed a second‑half penalty that would have turned it into a rout.
Guardiola said his team did not have much of a chance of overturning the huge deficit but insisted they would give it their all next week when the two teams meet again at the Etihad.
“Of course we’re going to try,” said Guardiola. “Now it’s difficult to lift our mindset, but we’ll be there, we’ll try with our people.
“I think we played quite a good game. We’ve tried to do our best. We got to the box many times and when you were able to do that it means you have followed a good process, but we didn’t score. Real Madrid has always been very dangerous but I don’t have the feeling that [Thibaut] Courtois has played a great game.
“He made a parry from Nico [O’Reilly] in the second half but we have reached that byline many times, six, seven, eight times so we’ve done a good job, we were just missing this last detail.”
Bernardo Silva rued his side’s collapse and said they struggled to remain calm and stick to the gameplan after conceding the first goal.
“The environment we could not control and my team let the emotions change the game,” City’s captain said. “We felt comfortable but after conceding the first one we lost complete control, stopped controlling transitions and second balls. When you play against Real Madrid with the quality they have you pay the price.”
