Pep Guardiola gives Man City verdict in Real Madrid drubbing - 'Useless'

CommentsSportSimon Bajkowski Chief Manchester City Writer23:03, 11 Mar 2026Pep Guardiola defended Manchester City's performance against Real Madrid despite admitting the reality that there is little chance of them making it through to the Champions League quarter-finals. The Blues started confidently but were blown away by a clinical Real side that will take a 3-0 lead into next week's second leg at the Etihad.

It took a penalty save from Gianluigi Donnarumma to stop Real making the scoreline even uglier for City in the second half, yet having called for his team to show up for the big occasions Guardiola felt that they played better than the result suggested.

"I think we played quite a good game," he said. "I think we've tried to do our best and we could not create chances where Courtois could not intervene. We got to the box many times and when you were able to do that it means you have followed a good process but we didn't score.

"Real Madrid has always been very dangerous but I don't have the feeling that Courtois has played a great game. He made a parry from Nico [O'Reilly] in the second half but we have reached that byline many times - six, seven, eight times - so we've done a good job, we were just missing this detail.

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"If you dominate [Real] you always have this feeling of them being able to run but my feeling about ourselves is we've done quite a good job. But because the score is 3-0 that is a little bit useless."