Real Madrid make special request to Uefa for Man City clash in desperate bid to intimidate Champions League holders
PEP GUARDIOLA wants his Treble winners to ‘hurt and punish’ Jude Bellingham and Co tomorrow night.
But Real Madrid will aim to bring the roof in on the Champions League holders by ramping up the noise in their new-look £1.5billion Bernabeu.
The 14-time European Cup winners have asked Uefa for permission to close the roof for the quarter-final first leg and make the atmosphere as intimidating as possible for Manchester City.
However, City boss Guardiola has told his players that simply trying to contain Real is not enough — especially as they walloped them 5-1 on aggregate in last season’s semi-final.
He said: “We cannot come here just to control the game. We have to try to hurt them, to punish them.
“We have to let them know we are here to score goals. We have to impose our game, show who we are.
“We did it — and if we did it once we can do it again.”
Guardiola acknowledges England ace Bellingham has made Madrid a more formidable opponent than the one they thumped last season.
He added: “He’s done an incredible season in terms of goals, assists, his presence in the box.
“Not just Madrid but with the England national team he’s been brilliant.
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“It’s not just his skills — it is what he has done with his brain and mind.”
City’s Spanish midfielder Rodri will have the task of trying to keep the Three Lions ace quiet.
Former Borussia Dortmund star Bellingham, 20, is one of four Madrid players walking a disciplinary tightrope as they are on yellow cards.
Rodri, 27, said: “We know him — we’ve faced Dortmund a lot, he is powerful, he has strength.
“Madrid play differently. They have more control with him and we have to adapt but I don’t like focusing on one player.”
And Rodri has warned Real that City are a more mature team after ending their long wait for a first Champions League trophy last season.
He scored the only goal in the final against Inter Milan in June.
Rodri added: “It gives you more composure, serenity on the pitch.
“We’ve had the experience and we are more mature than when we first played.
“We are the winners and we want to do it again. I am so confident about how we will play.”
Uefa will decide this morning whether Madrid will be allowed to close the roof at their revamped 81,000-seater home.
It was shut when they beat RB Leipzig in the last 16 and they plan to create a red-hot atmosphere this evening.
Real wanted this first leg moved to the Etihad to avoid a potential clash with neighbours Atletico, who host Dortmund tomorrow.
They have also asked fans to wear white to help make it as intimidating as possible for Pep’s men.
Phillips’ West Ham loan is a disaster… it’s toe-curlingly difficult to watch, says Dave Kidd
By Dave Kidd
HE’S had an extraordinary career, Kalvin Phillips.
A Treble-winner and one of only 12 living Englishmen to have started the final of a major international tournament.
A home-town hero at Leeds, where he was the kingpin of Marcelo Bielsa’s buccaneering Championship-winning side and feted as the ‘Yorkshire Pirlo’.
England’s Player of the Year in 2021, when the Three Lions reached a final for the first time in more than half a century.
Indeed, Phillips has featured in most of England’s best wins of the last three years — against Germany and Denmark at those Euros, home and away in qualifiers against Italy, against a Belgium side ranked No 1 in the world, the World Cup thrashing of Senegal and in last autumn’s hammering of the Scots.
That record for Gareth Southgate’s side points to a great irony.
If Phillips had stayed put as a Manchester City bench-warmer, he would be going to Germany this summer and quite possibly as a starter.
The mighty man-bun man has been a fine footballer and, at 28, he might become one again.
Phillips is also a good bloke too, much-loved in the England squad and attracting a full house from the entire Leeds staff when the club held a leaving do before his Etihad move in a £45million deal.
But right now Phillips has become unwatchable. Toe-curling, cringeworthy, hide-behind-the-sofa-the-Daleks-are-coming levels of unwatchable.
His loan switch to West Ham, which originally looked sensible for club and player, is an unmitigated disaster.
And it feels as if Phillips is at the centre of a football-wide conspiracy which has deemed that anything which could go wrong, will go wrong.