Manchester City 4-3 Real Madrid: Los Blancos are a Champions League force of nature - The Warm-Up

WEDNESDAY'S BIG STORIES Real Madrid remain in this tie, somehow Ad/> Pep Guardiola knew. The fury when Riyad Mahrez took a heavy touch and thrashed the ball into the side-netting and the exasperation when Phil Foden took a heavy touch and lashed wide evidenced that.

Champions League‘We played a fantastic game’ – Guardiola reflects on seven-goal thriller10 HOURS AGO A two-goal lead for City against just about any other team in world football would probably prove terminal. Yet, Guardiola knew that a two-goal advantage against Madrid — following early strikes from Kevin De Bruyne and Gabriel Jesus — was, relatively speaking, meagre.

City led by two goals thrice — at 2-0, 3-1 and 4-2 — but head to the Bernabeu with a fragile one-goal advantage after a 4-3 win in a pulsating first-leg encounter at the Etihad. Phil Foden — scorer of a goal in a Champions League semi-final at the age of 21 — embodied City's disappointment in a forlorn post-match interview in which he lamented their tendency to «give the ball away in dangerous areas», adding that they knew that Carlo Ancelotti's Madrid would «punish them».

And punish them they inevitably did. First, Benzema hooked a languid left leg at Ferland Mendy's whipped cross to halve the deficit ahead of the interval.

Then, after first-half substitute Fernandinho — on for the injured John Stones — dropped a Trent Alexander-Arnold-esqe ball on the head of Foden six yards out to re-open the two-goal advantage, Vinicius Jr. reminded Fernandinho that he was, in fact, a 36-year-old playing out of position; the Real Madrid schemer schemed his way past the elder Brazilian with the sort of dummy that leaves long-lasting psychological scars before skipping his way from the halfway line to bear