\n<\/p>\n
Pep Guardiola was able to celebrate a 2-1 Champions League victory at Real Madrid on Wednesday night \u2013 a result that does not come along too often. But the Manchester City manager was clear that his team would have to raise their performance levels in the knockout rounds if they are to repeat their triumph of 2023 in the competition.<\/p>\n
It was a night when the pressure intensified on the Madrid manager, Xabi Alonso, who is fighting for this job after his team\u2019s poor results continued. They have won only two of their past eight games in all competitions.<\/p>\n
The plus point for Alonso was that there was fight and some good football from Madrid, who led through Rodrygo\u2019s goal. But City turned things around before half-time with Nico O\u2019Reilly\u2019s strike and an Erling Haaland penalty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be a good lesson for the future because that level is not quite enough,\u201d Guardiola said. \u201cI\u2019ve been here [at the Bernab\u00e9u] many times in the last five years and we have played much better than today and not won. This is the reality. But yeah, I will take it. The reality is that in the latter stages, you have to do better.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t misunderstand me. Winning at the Bernab\u00e9u is a big, big task. Especially in this competition. But at the same time, come February and March \u2026 the level required must be better. We will work on it. It\u2019s not enough today. When we go to PSG, Anfield, Arsenal, we have to do better \u2013 but knowing the players we will be better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola was asked whether he believed his team would be able to grow into the competition, peaking when it mattered in the knockout stages. \u201cThat will happen, 100% for sure \u2013 as long as there are no injuries,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Football Daily<\/span><\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Alonso tried to remain upbeat despite the disappointment, insisting he sensed the support of his players. \u201cYes, I did feel that,\u201d he said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t lost our faith. With all the difficulties we are living with, such as all of the injuries, the players are giving until the last breath. That\u2019s why I have nothing to reproach them over. The results are not what we want but we have to keep working and believing that things will be better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pep Guardiola was able to celebrate a 2-1 Champions League victory at Real Madrid on Wednesday night \u2013 a result that does not come along too often. But the Manchester City manager was clear that his team would have to raise their performance levels in the knockout rounds if they are to repeat their triumph<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1485,7201,5380,1408,1570,1259],"class_list":{"0":"post-36818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-city","9":"tag-guardiola","10":"tag-level","11":"tag-madrid","12":"tag-manchester","13":"tag-win"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}