After the controversial UCL Ban was lifted, the English club can now look forward to the return of this season's Champions League in August safe in the knowledge that it is not the final chance for Pep Guardiola and a cast of stellar players to win European football's biggest prize.
The Champions League is the one trophy missing from City's collection over the past decade and is the one they most desire, but Real Madrid’s great form and morale-boosting LaLiga win could prove a challenge.
City have never made it beyond the quarter-finals of the Champions League in Guardiola's previous three seasons in charge, but he believes their time could come in August when the competition resumes. And this could indeed be the case, if we look at their current form: since English football's restart last month, City have been in scintillating form, scoring four or more goals in six of their past league games, including a 4-0 humbling of newly crowned champions Liverpool.
However, Real Madrid have had a similar stunning run. Los Blancos started off after the break trailing behind Barcelona, but after an impressive run of no losses, 10 wins and one draw, also helped by their rivals’ drop in form, Zinedine Zidane’s men were crowned LaLiga champions with one game to go.
There is not doubt that Real Madrid has a lot of weapons and ways to play a game against the main favourite of the tournament Manchester City, but Guardiola is incredibly excited for the game, as he has already started to set a game plan to achieve the victory against Los Blancos.
Guardiola does not think about anything else, he is focused only on Real Madrid. He believes that if they go ahead and think about the quarter-finals, their opponents will punish them severely. "We have to play Madrid first. If we go further and look at the next round, the kings of the competition will throw us out," said Guardiola.
"There's no one in City who knows Madrid as well as I do. I know how we have to play," concluded Guardiola. In the first leg, he already proved it: his team won 2-1 against Real Madrid, and Zidane does not have the same advantage of knowing City first hand.
The team to progress to the final eight, to be held in neutral venues in Lisbon, could end up meeting Juventus in the quarter-finals before a potential reunion for Guardiola with Barcelona or Bayern Munich in the last four.