UEFA Champions League - Real Madrid aim for title defense as City continue Champions League push

2023-05-17 15:17

UEFA Champions League - Real Madrid aim for title defense as City continue Champions League push


The second round of the UEFA Champions League semi-finals in the 2022/23 season will be another focus match. "Blue Moon" Manchester City will sit at the Etihad Stadium to face La Liga giants Real Madrid, and hope to defend their home court advantage and advance to the Champions League final.


Looking back at the results of the first round of the match between the two sides, Real Madrid relied on Vinicius' goal to take the lead, but De Bruyne also scored in the second half. In the end, Manchester City shook hands with Real Madrid 1-1.


In the previous Premier League, after scoring goals from Gundogan and Haaland, Manchester City finally defeated Everton 3-0 in the away game, and achieved an extraordinary record of 11 consecutive victories in the league. Guardiola's team Only need to score 3 points again to win the Premier League championship in advance, and the morale of the players will continue to improve.


In addition, after defeating Getafe in the last round of La Liga relying on Asensio's goal, Real Madrid continued to rank second in the standings with 71 points. After that, they could only watch the leader Barcelona advance 4 Won the La Liga championship round. Although Real Madrid also won the Spanish King's Cup before, Ancelotti's team naturally hopes to achieve a major goal of defending the Champions League.


It is worth noting that this focus battle is also the 10th match between Manchester City and Real Madrid in the Champions League. In the previous 9 encounters, Manchester City and Real Madrid have achieved 3 victories, including 3 draws. In the previous three Champions League semi-finals, two of them were eliminated by Real Madrid.


In terms of lineup, only Ake is injured in Manchester City, and the performance of generals such as Harland, De Bruyne, Gundogan, and Grealish will be the focus of this campaign. In addition, there is no injury problem in Real Madrid's lineup. Benzema, Rodrigo and Alaba were rested in the last round of the league, so Ancelotti can resort to a strong lineup to deal with Manchester City's offensive.