John Stones reveals secret behind Man City Champions League success after learning lesson from Chelsea defeat

John Stones says he made a conscious effort to adjust his approach for the Champions League final having learned from the defeat by Chelsea in 2021.

City finally reached the promised land when they completed an historic treble with victory over Inter Milan in Istanbul last month.

It was a sweet moment for everyone associated with the club, and even more so for those who had tasted defeat in their first European Cup final two years earlier.

Stones believes he might have dealt with the occasion as best as he could have in the Chelsea defeat, and wanted to make sure he went into the final against Inter feeling as calm as possible.

“It’s really not sunk in to be honest,” he told reporters in Tokyo. “I tried to approach it differently from the previous time, I didn’t want to make the same routine before the game. I wanted to make it different, I wanted to be calmer, I wanted to be focused about winning and not the occasion, not trying to think about too much from the outside, like ‘What if this, or that’, I wanted to go in with a winning mentality and knowing that we were going to win that game, not arrogantly, I think that’s speaking it into existence almost and it worked!

“Honestly you’ll hear it a lot but it’s a dream come true, I can’t describe the feeling, I can’t put it into words, it really hasn’t sunk in yet.”

When quizzed on what exactly he had changed for the match, Stones revealed that it was more to do with adjustments to his mentality rather than to his training schedule.

He added: “Everything was the same I just didn’t want to go through the same process, it might be strange of me but that’s my thinking, I didn’t want to do something that led up to a defeat and such a difficult summer. It was only minor tweaks