A delighted Pep Guardiola hailed Manchester City reaching a third successive Champions League semi-final, where they will face Real Madrid, the holders who “have to be beaten” if the competition is to be won.
The second leg 1-1 draw with Bayern Munich took City through 4-1 on aggregate to meet Real in the last four. “Three years in a row the semi-finals – doing it [tonight] against an incredible team,” said Guardiola.
“Eleven semi-finals in 30 years for Real – so hats off to them. We have done three. All the clubs in the world have the feeling that if you want to win this competition you have to beat Real Madrid, it used to be Barcelona but now it’s Madrid.”
Last season Real eliminated City at the same stage yet Bernardo Silva struck a bullish note about meeting them again. “We will go for it definitely,” said the playmaker. “We always go for it but we feel the team is very, very confident at the minute. I think we are going through.”
Erling Haaland shrugged off a first-half penalty miss to score City’s opener at the Allianz Arena after the interval before Joshua Kimmich scored a late Bayern consolation from the spot. Thomas Tuchel’s touchline complaints led to a second yellow card and a sending-off just before the end.
As Haaland waited to take the penalty Leon Goretzka was instructed by the referee, Clément Turpin, to discard an object near the spot that may have been thrown there by a supporter.
Guardiola said: “He [Haaland] will learn how to do it. He’s 22 years old – for him he’s an incredible machine, he wanted to take it but he’ll learn in the future. The finish from Erling was really, really good. He is so young. The experience that we have in this competition, the players feel it a lot, they want to do it really well. The second half was much better.
“We struggled in the first half. [Dayot] Upamecano broke all the lines down our left side and we struggled with [Kingsley] Coman. We were fortunate before the penalty miss, they had one or two chances and anything could happen but we defended really well.”
Next in City’s pursuit of the treble is Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final against Sheffield United. “We are exhausted. I don’t know how we will recover. Now is a tough moment for the game,” said Guardiola. On his sending-off, Tuchel said only: “The referee was unfortunately a grade E.”
