Marc Gheihy and Antoine Semenho are set to make their Champions League debuts at Manchester City, with Guardiola making seven changes for tonight’s clash with Real Madrid.
Captain Bernardo Silva, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Ruben Dias, Rodri and Erling Haaland were all from the side that beat Newcastle 3-1 on Saturday.
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Gay and Semenho become the second players to feature in non-league, all four Football League divisions and the Champions League, having been ineligible for the final stages of the campaign since moving to the Etihad in January.
O’Reilly and Haaland both scored when we won 2-1 at the Bernabeu at the beginning of the season.
team
Real Madrid XI: Courtois, Alexander-Arnold, Rudiger, Huizen, Mendy, Chuameni, Valverde (center), Brahim, Thiago, Guler, Vinicius
Substitute: Lunin, Gonzalez, Carvajal, Camavinga, Gonzalo, Asensio, Garcia, Mastantono, Aguado, Sestero, Angel, Palacios
Eleven cities: Donnarumma, Kusanov, Dias, Guich, O’Reilly, Rodri, Bernardo (center), Savinho, Semenho, Doku, Haaland
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Substitute: Trafford, Bettinelli, Reynders, Stones, Ake, Mamouche, Cherki, Nico, Aite Nouri, Nunez, Foden, Alleyne
how we line up
Guardiola has been very flexible in selecting 11 players in the squad and he has many options.
It looks like Abdulkodir Kusanov and O’Reilly could become our full-backs, just like they did against Madrid three months ago, with Dias and Gueye in the middle.
This leaves the midfield consisting of Rodri and Bernardo, with Semenho potentially becoming the No. 10 player.
Jeremy Doku and Savinho are our natural wingers, with Haaland leading the way.
We’ve been here before!
Perhaps it’s a strange statistic, over the past five seasons we have faced Real Madrid more times than some of our Premier League rivals such as Aston Villa.
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This is the 16th meeting between the two sides in the Champions League and the 10th in five seasons, with the second leg taking place at the Etihad Stadium next week. That’s twice as many as any other opponent – the next closest is Bayern Munich with eight.
Of course, it’s only been three months since we were last at the Santiago Bernabeu, when goals from Nico O’Reilly and Erling Haaland secured a brilliant 2-1 victory.
Our 15 encounters lasted for more than 90 minutes, with 5 wins and 5 draws each, while at the Bernabeu, we had 2 wins and 2 draws in 8 games.
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With both teams showing so much attacking talent, this could be a night where both goalkeepers need to be at their best.
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The clash pits arguably two of the greatest goalkeepers in the world today – Manchester City’s Donnarumma and Real Madrid’s Thibaut Courtois – wearing gloves.
Donnarumma won the Champions League with Paris Saint-Germain last year and had some outstanding performances in the competition that helped him win the FIFA Men’s Goalkeeper of the Year crown.
Courtois, meanwhile, has conceded just 39 goals (excluding own goals) in 53.2 expected goals attempts since the 2022 final, with a +14.2 plus differential, the highest of any goalkeeper in the competition during that time.
“He has been at the top level and has been one of the best players in his class for many years,” Donnarumma said ahead of tonight’s game.
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“I have a lot to learn from him. He performs at the top level in every team and he has been one of the two or three best in the world for many years.
“We hope we can do our best in these two games and I hope we have some space to score goals but he is a great goalkeeper.”
Match statistics
Only Bayern Munich (eight) and Juventus (seven) have won more Champions League games against Real Madrid than Manchester City (five).
However, City have been knocked out of the Champions League four times by Real Madrid and are the only team to knock us out more than twice. This includes each of the past two seasons: the 2023/24 quarter-finals and the 2024/25 play-offs.
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The last team to keep a clean sheet in an away game against Real Madrid in the Champions League knockout rounds was Barcelona in April 2011, when Pep Guardiola won 2-0. Since then, the Spanish team has scored 39 consecutive goals, averaging 2.2 goals per game (86 goals in total).
Guardiola will coach his 190th Champions League game here, tying Ferguson’s total number of Champions League games (190). After this game, Guardiola will be second only to Ancelotti (218) on the list of Champions League games played by a head coach with the most games.
Heading into the round of 16, Manchester City has scored the most goals in consecutive attacks in the Champions League this season (six), while no team has scored more goals in direct attacks than Real Madrid (four, level with Benfica). Real Madrid also ranks first in the total number of direct attacks this season (31).
Kylian Mbappe has scored more goals against Manchester City in the Champions League than any other opponent (seven), including a hat-trick against us in last season’s play-offs.
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Since the start of the 2019/20 season (Erling Haaland’s first), only four players have scored more than 50 goals in the Champions League, three of them playing for Real Madrid (Mbappe 71, Vinicius Júnior 55) or Manchester City (Haaland 61), along with Robert Lewandowski (63).
Among the remaining teams in the 2025/26 season and the teams before the last 16 knockout rounds, the two players with the highest proportion of goals in the Champions League this season are Mbappe (54% – 13/24) and Haaland (47% – 7/15).
