Sergio Aguero says Manchester City ‘s players are determined to hand Manuel Pellegrini a farewell outing in the Champions League Final.
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Aguero missed a first-half penalty on Tuesday but Kevin De Bruyne’s 76th-minute strike saved the Argentine’s blushes as it ensured City beat PSG to qualify for the semi-finals of Europe’s elite club competition for the first time.
Kevin De Bruyne’s late goal clinched a 1-0 win on the night and a 3-2 aggregate victory but Blanc was less than willing to pass on his congratulations.
City are in Friday’s draw alongside Real Madrid, with Barcelona and Bayern Munich favourites to join them tonight. They played better than us and we weren’t able to score when we were dominating and that makes it harder to win matches.
Ibrahimovic has no doubt PSG are good enough to take the next step but recognises chances have to be taken and feels the team let their standards slip.
PSG were already missing David Luiz and Blaise Matuidi through suspension and Marco Verratti through injury, and visiting coach Laurent Blanc sprang a major surprise by setting his team out in an untried 3-4-1-2 system.
City had never reached this far in the Champions League but is not gatecrashing the semifinals undeservedly by a stroke of luck.
The 24-year-old Belgium global forward scored with a brilliantly-manufactured 76th minute curling shot from the edge of the box to give City a 1-0 win over the French champions to reach the Champions League semi-finals for the first time. When we win, it is the players. And he admitted that he was disappointed not to go through to the semi-finals.
“There was a pretty good performance in the final of the Capital One – it was important we won that”.
“We put a lot of pressure on PSG and even after the missed penalty we played well. It’s has been a season with ups-and-downs, but in the Champions League we’ve been doing well”.
He said: “We want to fight till the end”.
We talk about it before the game, but we don’t do what we say we’ll do. I know that we receive a lot of criticism for different reasons, but I think that we are improving every year.
The Belgian midfielder said: “It is huge for this club”.
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Pellegrini has reached the last four of the Champions League once before, being knocked out of the semi-finals by Arsenal in 2006 during his time in charge of Villarreal.
