Fernandinho rescued a draw for City at the Parc des Princes on Wednesday, after Zlatan Ibrahimovic benefitted from Fernando’s error and Adrien Rabiot struck to overturn Kevin De Bruyne’s opener. Ibrahimovic only had to block a pass from Fernando to put the ball into an empty net, as goalkeeper Joe Hart was caught out of position. Although, PSG have the necessary elements in their arsenal to topple Man City, the away goals can enable the English side to adopt a defensive stance to the game, which may work to City’s advantage.
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De Bruyne said: “I think it was a hard game but that is what we expected”. “Fortunately for us he has returned in the same way because he makes a difference”.
The Italian coach stressed: “The way we play, we are not used to playing to try and draw”.
Manchester City must not start dreaming of the Champions League semi-finals despite their impressive 2-2 draw at Paris Saint-Germain, warns Manuel Pellegrini.
“It was a very close game against a very good team with very good players”, Pellegrini added.
Aguero confirmed as much after the match, saying: “I am happy with the result. So if we manage to give the same performance, without committing the same mistakes, we can go through”.
“Tonight we played away and it was a good result”. Adrian Rabiot put PSG ahead on the other side of the half, before Fernandinho found a leveler with twenty minutes to go.
“There were talks with PSG, but finally chose to join Manchester City, saw them as a better option”.
De Bruyne was unsafe in attack throughout in what was only his second game since returning from a two-month lay-off with a knee injury.
Here, Press Association Sport looks at five things we learned from the quarter-final first-leg clash.
“I don’t think our philosophy will change in Manchester”.
“But we have shown that we can score goals away from home”. Find us on Facebook too!
His PSG counterpart Laurent Blanc, however, was left to rue a disappointing display. “We shore it up a little bit more, in an ideal world”.
“This is our main regret”.
“We created more chances than City and we had most of the possession”. We knew we should avoid conceding and did so twice.
Hart was beaten four times by Sweden star Ibrahimovic – including an outrageous overhead kick – in an global in Stockholm in November 2012, but the City man insisted revenge was not on his mind. “I missed the biggest chance to score but scored when it was the hardest”.
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“We made avoidable mistakes. Obviously I don’t want to concede penalties but hopefully I can keep on improving on that”.
