Manchester City are through to the Champions League quarter-finals after beating Real Madrid 4-2 on aggregate.City had beaten Real 2-1 at the Bernabeu in Spain back on February 26. More than five months later, Pep Guardiola’s side triumphed over the La Liga champions by the same scoreline.Raphael Varane made two calamitous errors either side of half-time to allow Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus to punish him. And punish him they did.City are now big favourites to win the competition as they prepare to face Lyon in the last-eight next Saturday.While all the headlines will be positive when talking about what happened on the pitch, City fans are getting a bit of criticism for their actions before kick-off.Hundreds of them lined the streets to welcome the team coach as they lit smoke bombs.
In truth, it was a very half-hearted effort and simply doesn’t compare to what we’ve seen from Liverpool in the past.
But considering Manchester has been put back into lockdown due to a rise of coronavirus cases, those fans shouldn’t even have been gathering in the first place.
City fans had arranged a ‘guard of honour’ in tribute for the departing David Silva but it was cancelled at the last minute due to the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions.
Silva responded to the cancellation by tweeting: "I am touched our fans planned a guard of honour for me tonight but cancelling is the right decision in the circumstances. We will say goodbye together at the right time when it is safe. Enjoy the match at home!"
But like we say, City fans still turned out and attempted to create an atmosphere. But we can’t imagine the likes of Karim Benzema and Eden Hazard were particularly intimated by the welcome.
Instead, rival fans took to social media to mock City for their underwhelming attempt to greet their bus ahead of the game.
Check out some of the reaction:
After the match, Guardiola admitted that he was very pleased with his side’s performance.
"We created a lot of chances and scored two goals with mistakes from them. We tried to convince them to go, go and attack but it is not easy against this team," he said.
"We try to do it, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. In general we did a good job.
"We could not expect after 30 minutes be 4-0 up. The second half didn't have much but we created a lot. The players made an incredible effort - all of them. The first half we played with our wingers more inside, not wider. I think that was a mistake from my side. We corrected in the second half and were better.
"It is important, we beat them twice. Zinedine Zidane never lost knockout games. You see the calm and personality they play with, they are good. We are here to try and win the Champions League. It is one step, if we think that is enough we will show how small we are. If you want to win you have to beat the big clubs.
"I just spoke with the scouting department (about Lyon) and they told me to be alert. We have eight days to prepare for it. We will enjoy it and then after we will think about Lyon."