Man City cruise into Champions League quarterfinals
Pep Guardiola told his Manchester City players to forget their previous Champions League failures after cruising into the quarterfinals with a 2-0 win over Borussia Monchengladbach on Tuesday that sealed a 4-0 aggregate victory.
The Champions League is the one trophy that has remained elusive to Guardiola during his five years in Manchester with City failing to ever get beyond the last eight under the Catalan.
But the runaway Premier League leaders will get the chance to break that barrier next month as they showed why they are the bookies’ favourites for the competition with another classy performance in Budapest, which hosted both legs of the tie due to coronavirus restrictions on travel between England and Germany.
Early goals from Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan killed off any hope of a fightback from the Germans as City recorded a 24th win in their last 25 games in all competitions.
“What happened in the past is the past,” said Guardiola, who won the Champions League twice as coach of Barcelona but has been unable to replicate that success with Bayern Munich or City.
“In the quarterfinals one bad game, (a few) bad minutes can punish you.
“Now it is the best teams in Europe. The quality every time is higher and hopefully we can maintain this mood.”
De Bruyne and Gundogan were two of a host of first-team regulars left out by Guardiola for Saturday’s 3-0 win at Fulham and City looked refreshed in a fast start.
De Bruyne blasted in the opener from outside the box off the underside of the bar on 12 minutes.
Six minutes later a flowing move from back to front saw Phil Foden release Gundogan in behind the Gladbach defence to score his 15th goal of the season.
“The start obviously helps a lot,” said De Bruyne. “We were patient in the beginning and then scoring the two goals gives us a bit of a cover knowing they need to come out a little bit more. I think we controlled the game.”
Gladbach have now lost all seven games since manager Marco Rose announced he will be leaving the club at the end of the season to join Borussia Dortmund.