\n<\/p>\n
The City manager made several bold tactical changes for the first leg, returning Nico O\u2019Reilly to left-back and starting Jeremy Doku and Savinho on the wings, as well as Antoine Semenyo, who played up front alongside Erling Haaland. <\/p>\n
With four attacking players on the pitch, Bernardo Silva and Rodri were left exposed in the centre, as were a back four who could not cope once Madrid burst through midfield.<\/p>\n
Add to those structural issues an inspired performance from the unstoppable Federico Valverde, and there is logic to the result.<\/p>\n
More generally speaking, there is a case that City are contending with different physical challenges this season, something that could be behind second-half slumps and sluggishness without the ball. <\/p>\n
Using SkillCorner data (above<\/em>, as of March 13), we can see City generally resisted the shift towards transitional, end-to-end football in the Premier League, persisting with their high-possession approach until their lack of athleticism in midfield was ruthlessly exposed last year.<\/p>\n Summer additions and a stylistic shift mean that City, on average, are sprinting around 17.6 per cent more in 2025-26 than they were last campaign.<\/p>\n That marks a big jump which is sure to have an effect on some of those players who maybe aren\u2019t used to covering such distances at top speed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pep Guardiola will be the last person to blame fatigue for last week\u2019s 3-0 defeat and the first to blame himself. The City manager made several bold tactical changes for the first leg, returning Nico O\u2019Reilly to left-back and starting Jeremy Doku and Savinho on the wings, as well as Antoine Semenyo, who played up … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Manchester-City-vs-Real-Madrid-live-updates-Champions-League-latest.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24127,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24125\/revisions\/24127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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