Pep Guardiola paused momentarily to mime tossing a coin, as if to reinforce his point about the Jekyll and Hyde nature of his team this season.
Manchester City head into their biggest game of a chaotic season against Real Madrid at the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday night with their manager admitting he is not sure which side will turn up.
“We were unstable this season, when we were not in the past,” Guardiola said ahead of the first leg of City’s Champions League play-off against the competition’s 15-time winners and current holders. “When we achieved trebles and quadruples, we were a machine. Always we come back. This season we struggled a lot.
“Of course it would be good to continue [in Europe] for the club, for the prestige to win this competition. I like to feel that – week by week, month by month – we are there.
“In the past I would feel: ‘Yeah, the team is consistent, we can do it’. But now it’s like…”
Cue that pretend coin toss for dramatic effort. “I don’t know. Always you had a feeling that the players are always there. Now we have a lot of injuries and players who are a little bit up and down.”
This is City’s seventh meeting with Real in four seasons and it is hard to remember Guardiola going into any of those previous games against the Madrid giants with quite the doubts or worries he has at the moment about his team.
Real are missing key defenders Antonio Rudiger, David Alaba, Eder Militao and Dani Carvajal while Lucas Vázquez, who has been filling in at right-back, has also been ruled out of the match with a hamstring injury.
It means Federico Valverde may have to deputise at full-back with midfielder Aurélien Tchouameni set to continue his makeshift centre-half partnership with Raúl Asencio, the 21-year-old academy graduate who has just 21 senior appearances to his name.
Such a scenario might ordinarily have greatly emboldened Guardiola in previous years, but the City manager has enough concerns about his own defence, which has been ransacked by Paris St-Germain and Arsenal in recent weeks and looked alarmingly susceptible to the transition for most of a turbulent campaign.
In Kylian Mbappé, Vinicius Junior, Rodrygo and Jude Bellingham, Real certainly have the tools to hurt City at pace on the break and Guardiola no longer has the added security blanket that Kyle Walker’s speed so often provided in these ties.
It should at least be a more familiar, experienced-looking City back line in Ruben Dias, John Stones, Manuel Akanji and Josko Gvardiol, but meetings between these two have invariably thrown up goals and, looking at both defences, there is little to think it will be any different this time around.
Guardiola said it was “impossible for 90 minutes, 180 minutes or 200 minutes – it depends on extra-time – to control these four players”, in reference to Mbappé, Vinicius, Rodrygo and Bellingham.
But they will at least have to find a way to limit the damage that quartet can cause at the same time as ensuring they maximise their own attacking talents, not least Erling Haaland, who has seven goals in his past eight games but has yet to score against Real for City.
“They [Real’s forwards] are exceptional,” Guardiola said. “How they combine, the runners, the ability one against one, how they keep the ball. Everybody knows it. So we have to reduce their involvement as much as possible – knowing that is going to happen, accept it. At the same time, we are going to try to impose our game – be smart, especially in the first leg. It’s important to read the tempo basically. We have to play good to get a good result for the Bernabéu.”
Dias was eager to talk up City’s own attacking strengths rather than fixate on those at Real’s disposal. “I think it’s a question of believing in what we have in the dressing room and we have loads of guns – we just need to use them the right way,” the City defender said. “And with the right belief, we are able to do anything.”
If City intend to use Real’s decision to boycott the Ballon d’Or amid anger that Vinicius was overlooked for the award in favour of the City midfielder Rodri as some sort of motivation, they were not letting on. Guardiola shot down attempts to drag up the issue while Dias claimed he “didn’t spend one second thinking about if he [Rodri] was disrespected or not”.
Rodri, of course, will be missing through injury. But Dias suggested City could channel the heartbreak of being eliminated on penalties by Real in the quarter-final last season after dominating the second leg, in the same way they used the despair at their late capitulation at the Bernabéu in May 2022 as motivation to overcome Madrid en route to the treble a year later. “It’s part of everything that’s yet to come,” he said.
“In the treble year, without a doubt it was very important to remember that feeling we had in the Bernabéu [the season before]. Last year was frustrating because we ended up dominating the game so much but still couldn’t score the goal that would have made the difference before the penalties.”
City are a different, more fragile entity this time around, though. Guardiola will hope it is City’s better side that reveals itself at the Etihad.
Dias fires Real Madrid warning: We will outgun you
Ruben Dias is backing Manchester City to “outgun” Real Madrid’s superstar strike force, despite Pep Guardiola admitting he is unsure which side of his spluttering team will turn up.
City face Real in the first leg of their Champions League play-off at the Etihad on Tuesday night hoping to reignite their turbulent campaign in a potentially make-or-break next fortnight for the Premier League champions.
Guardiola mimed tossing a coin as he admitted he was not certain what to expect from his side after such an inconsistent season.
But Dias believes City have the attacking talents to hurt Real at the same time as curbing the threat of the 15-time European champions’ glittering attack of Kylian Mbappé, Vinicius Junior, Rodrygo and Jude Bellingham, who have 63 goals between them this season.
“Since I’ve been here this is maybe the most difficult season, but I’m a firm believer that even in the most difficult scenario you can achieve something and do something difficult,” the City defender said.
“We know how difficult our opposition is and how difficult it will be to get there, but I think it’s a question of believing in what we have in the dressing room and we have loads of guns – we just need to use [them] the right way. And with the right belief, we are able to do anything.
“We know that they have a special ability to be more flexible than most teams and that’s why we need to be really good and very solid at the back. The more solid we are at the back, the more comfortable we’ll be in the game.”
City have lost 11 of their last 23 matches, which included defeats by Sporting, Juventus and Paris St-Germain in the Champions League, and Guardiola said it was hard to predict which side would show up against Real.
“When we achieved trebles and quadruples, we were a machine. Always we come back. This season we struggled a lot.
“Of course it would be good to continue [in Europe] for the club, for the prestige to win this competition. In the past I would feel: ‘Yeah, the team is consistent, we can do it.’ But now it’s like [tosses imaginary coin], I don’t know.”
Despite City’s inconsistencies, Guardiola brushed aside questions about his future from the Madrid media.
“I know that in the stadiums they tell me I’m getting sacked in the morning, when we’re losing. But no, I don’t have this feeling. I’m still here for what we’ve won in previous seasons. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t be here. But if you ask me my opinion I don’t have this feeling I’m going to be thrown out on the street.”
Real are missing five defenders, including Antonio Rudiger, David Alaba, Eder Militao and Dani Carvajal, but Dias said that should not lull them into a false sense of security.
“I think the first error we could make is to relax thinking this will give us an advantage,” he said. “We see it but all we can do is take advantage of that if we’re at the level we need to be at. That’s what we need to focus on, to get up to that level and be there and have the balance within the game and perhaps those things will come in our favour, but we can’t think about them being weak.”
