Madrid, Feb 18 (IANS): Ahead of the highly awaited contest between Manchester City and Real Madrid, at the Santiago Bernabeu on Thursday (IST), Italian head coach Carlo Ancelotti continued with the mind games started by Pep Guardiola.
After City's 4-0 win over Newcastle United on the weekend, Guardiola suggested he only gives his side a one 1% chance of winning against the defending European Champions.
"I'll ask him before the game tomorrow. Do you really think he thinks he just has a one percent [chance]. Of course he thinks he has more possibilities and we don't think we have a 99% chance.
"We think we have a small advantage, one which we have to take advantage of. We will try to play the same game we played in the first leg - things worked out very well then,” said Ancelotti in the pre-game press conference.
The ongoing tie between the two sides is the fifth two-legged tie between the two clubs in the last six seasons, with both sides progressing through two of the previous four stretching back to 2019/20. Last season’s meeting ended in a penalty shootout at the Etihad, with Real winning and eventually going on to lift the trophy itself. The 2022/23 campaign saw City demolish Real at the Etihad in the semifinal stage in one of the greatest European nights in the Club’s history on the way to winning a historic treble.
With the game precariously set to be another all-timer between the two sides, Ancelotti claimed his side will be going with the same approach they did last week.
“It will be an entertaining, complicated and difficult match. We have tried to prepare well and we want to recover the players who can help us. We are going to try to play the same game we did a week ago.
"We will take into account the difficulty of this type of match, a tie where we play everything in 90 minutes. You can tell the players that we don’t have the advantage and that we have to approach the game as if it were 0-0, but that’s nonsense and nobody believes you. There is an objective fact and that is that we scored three goals and City two,” he added.