Manchester City skipper Bernardo Silva admitted his team’s prospects of making it through to the Champions League quarter finals felt ‘really dark’ after Pep Guardiola’s side was humbled by Real Madrid in Estadio Santiago Bernabeu.
City fell to a crushing 3-0 defeat, and a stunning hat-trick by Federico Valverde, in this Round of 16 first leg tie that leaves them with a daunting task when they try to overcome it at the Etihad next Tuesday.
The result might easily have been worse. Gianluigi Donnarumma saved a weak second half penalty from Vinicius Jr that would surely have put the tie definitively beyond City’s reach.
City boss Pep Guardiola vowed that City would do everything they could but Bernardo said he feared their failure to score had left them with an uphill struggle against a team that may have Kylian Mbappe back in its ranks.
‘At 3-0 it makes it a bit more difficult,’ Bernardo said. ‘Now it feels really bad, now it feels really dark. But tomorrow is another day and for sure next week we will go to the game thinking we have a chance.’
He added: ‘It’s difficult to speak about it because I’d need to watch it again. My feeling on the pitch was we started well.
Bernardo Silva says Man City are enduring a ‘really dark’ moment after losing at Real Madrid
Pep Guardiola denied tinkering with his tactics too much after picking three wingers
‘The environment we couldn’t control. I think my team let emotions change the game. We felt comfortable, finding the right spaces, but after conceding the first we completely lost the control, stopped controlling transitions and second balls. When you play against Real Madrid with the quality they have you pay the price.
‘It’s a tough stadium. We’re used to playing at these stadiums because Anfield, St James’ Park is very tough. You need to go through these moments to become better and today was just a learning game for the whole team.’
City’s defeat completed a bleak couple of days for the six English clubs in Europe. Most had been expected to win. None of them did. And all of them face battles to make it through to the last eight.
‘People expected us to get battered tonight,’ Real Madrid right back and former Liverpool star Trent Alexander-Arnold said after the game as he paid tribute to Valverde, ‘but it just shows our mentality. We executed the game-plan perfectly.
‘I’m running out of words for Valverde as a player. Even when I was a Liverpool player I admired him. He’s the most under-rated footballer on the planet. He covers every blade of glass, gives his all, never lets us down. Maybe people will start talking about him a bit more now.’
Guardiola denied that he had tinkered too much with his team by playing wingers Jeremy Doku, Savinho and Antoine Semenyo in his starting line-up and took some solace from the fact his side had created chances.
‘I suppose three-nil is better than four-nil,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad result. We cannot deny it. It was difficult to control transition. The first goal was not well defended. So yes, it is a difficult result. Now we go to London to play West Ham and then next week, with our people, we will try.’
