Real Madrid vs Man City LIVE: Champions League result and final score after six-goal thriller

Manchester City’s recent record against Spanish sides is top notch. They have lost only one of their last 12 competition matches against such teams with eight wins and three draws in that run.

As is their way, Real Madrid have posted their starting XI early. This is who will play against Manchester City tonight:

Real Madrid XI: Lunin; Carvajal, Tchouameni, Rüdiger, Mendy; Valverde, Kroos, Camavinga, Bellingham; Vinícius, Rodrygo

Man City finished top of Group G in this season’s Champions League before beating Copenhagen 6-2 on aggregate in the round of 16.

Real Madrid, meanwhile, also won every game in the group stage, finishing eight points clear at the top of Group C before overcoming Leipzig 2-1 on aggregate in the last 16.

The Spanish side have won 16 of their 19 Champions League quarter-finals – including the last 11 – but face opponents whose 10-game winning run in the competition started with that second-leg success last season.

Can City beat Real once again but this time away from home?

Real Madrid have been granted permission to close the Bernabeu roof for the visit of Champions League holders Manchester City in the first leg of their quarter-final tie tonight.

The 14-time European champions wanted to close the new retractable roof in order to raise the atmosphere when taking on Pep Guardiola’s side, who defeated Madrid in last season’s semi-finals.

The iconic Bernabeu stadium in the Spanish capital has been developed in recent years and Real also received permission to close the roof for the second leg of their last-16 tie against RB Leipzig last month.

For the third season in a row Real Madrid and Manchester City meet in the latter stages of the Champions League in what will be the sides’ fifth knockout tie in nine seasons.

Madrid ousted City in the semi-finals on their way to a 14th European Cup victory in 2021/22 but Pep Guardiola’s side took their revenge at the same stage last season.

A 4-0 second-leg win in Manchester – Madrid’s record Champions League defeat – earned a place in the final, where City overcame Inter Milan to claim the trophy for the first time.

Kevin De Bruyne is expected to start for Manchester Coty but his presence in the side is not certain.

The Belgian playmaker became the 18th City player to reach 100 goals for the club last weekend with a brace against Crystal Palace and he became the first midfielder to achieve that milestone since club legend Colin Bell 53 years ago.

However, Phil Foden has been in exceptional form through the middle and could start ahead off the 32-year-old.

In the build up to this game Pep Guardiola took the time to speak with journalists about what it was like for Manchester City to win the Champions League for the first time last season.

“First I would say as a club there was a sense of relief,” he revealed at his pre-match press conference, “We made a lot of good things but always in the press conferences it was ‘you arrived seven years ago but you didn’t win the Champions League, you have to win the Champions League otherwise you would not complete [the job]’.

“Always I tried to reject it because this competition is so difficult. I would say we are a little bit more than one decade flying in Europe. Before we did not fly in Europe.

“Now we are a club who face this type of competition with the best teams of the world. But it is no more than one decade and a decade is not enough. Even now, to compete again, is experience for the future of our club. People say ‘once we have won it, it’s done’ No. Absolutely not.

“It’s not like elite clubs like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Inter Milan, for example, the big, big clubs who for 40, 50, 60, 70 years play in this competition.

“We are, in terms of history, new, but we have a sense of ‘okay, we did it’. And of course if we did it once, we can do it again.”

Pep Guardiola and Carlo Ancelotti may be the Champions League’s two defining managers of the 21st century. They were schooled by arguably the two most influential of the previous two decades. There the similarities might end.

Guardiola rarely passes up an opportunity to pledge his allegiance to Johan Cruyff, to underline his enduring gratitude to his mentor. Ancelotti is the Arrigo Sacchi disciple who became the antithesis of Sacchi. Having begun his coaching career with an unswerving belief in 4-4-2, he evolved into an amiable man-manager. One theory is that he ended up more like his former Roma coach Niels Liedholm than Sacchi, the rigid revolutionary.

None of which means Ancelotti is merely a raised eyebrow with an uncanny habit of winning the European Cup. A light touch can disguise the input he has, but Guardiola recognises it. “You don’t know how difficult it is to be a good manager,” he said. “A coach is only a tactics man, the manager has to be stable and manage players in good times and bad times.”

Carlo Ancelotti insists his Real Madrid team are confident going into tonight’s match and claims that they have learned from last year’s Champions League semi-final which saw Man City run away with the tie in the second leg.

“We didn’t play with courage and personality, which are fundamental aspects in this kind of game,” said Ancelotti of that 4-0 defeat, “We lacked that in the second leg.

“They put a lot of pressure on us up front and we didn’t find alternative solutions. We want to avoid these things in this tie. I’m confident we’re going to give our best. We have the quality to compete.

“We expect to be superior in some aspects and they will be superior in others.”