The opportunity to establish themselves as possibly the greatest club team of all time is the driving force behind Manchester City on Wednesday night.
No European team has ever won three titles in a row but City is 12 games away from accomplishing that and will likely get past the hardest obstacle left if they defeat Real Madrid in their Champions League quarterfinal match.
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“It is undoubtedly a source of inspiration and motivation,” stated midfielder Bernardo Silva, who opened the score in the thrilling 3-3 first-leg draw at the Bernabeu last week.
In the Champions League era, only Madrid has won the trophy in consecutive seasons, winning it three times out of four from 2014 to 2018. No English club has ever won four straight titles, which City will achieve if they win their remaining six league games.
Pep Guardiola and City, who also play Chelsea in this Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, are now motivated by these lofty records. On Tuesday, however, Guardiola downplayed the possibility of a double-treble, despite the fact that he is content to allow his players to fantasize.
“I have a different viewpoint, but I won’t tell my players not to feel this way. Those speculative dreams are very far from us, he stated.
“I’ll start to consider that when we’re in the FA Cup final, with two or three games left in the Premier League and the Champions League final. It wasn’t until we defeated Manchester United in the FA Cup Final last season that I began to consider winning the treble.
Man City On Its Way In Becoming The Greatest Club
If City defeats the 14-time European champions tonight, the prospect of immortality will feel much closer, especially since they have a two-point lead in the league and neither of their title rivals, Arsenal nor Liverpool, are left in the FA Cup.
Madrid continues to feel like the team to beat even though City is the current Champions League champions; yesterday, Bernardo even went so far as to call them the “kings of Europe.”
The Portuguese continued, “We want to build on this team’s success and win another Premier League to make it six in seven and four in a row. “And we want to win the Champions League so that we can tie Madrid’s record of two straight titles; no one else has ever won four Premier League titles in a row.”
Most importantly, there is no longer the fear factor that characterized City’s shocking semi-final loss to Madrid in 2020–21, when the eventual winners scored three goals at the Bernabeu after the ninetieth minute.
In the second leg of last season’s semi-final, according to The Standard, City destroyed them 4-0 at the Etihad; manager Guardiola called it the pinnacle of his career and said it signaled a change in power within elite European football. Guardiola, who is worried about Kyle Walker’s health, remarked, “I respect Real Madrid, [but] if I say I’m scared of them, I would be false.”
Guardiola declared in February that there was “99.99 per cent” chance his team would not win the treble from the previous year. These figures have already changed significantly, and if City wins tonight, they will drop even more.
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