Madrid were shocked in Germany while goals were not lacking in Paris between two attacking sides. What did the managers say after?
HECKING HAILS WOLFSBURG PERFORMANCE
A big compliment to my team and the fans. This was what I wanted. We wanted to get on Real's nerves; we fought, worked hard, and had the luck and the support to achieve a deserved win. We are in a good position now but we also know what will happen in Madrid. I looked into your faces and nobody believed what I said. But you see, everything is possible in football. We have the chance to knock Real out of this competition and will use every opportunity they give us.Bruno Henrique was one of the key players tonight. We wanted to surprise Madrid with his selection and the plan worked, because he played really well – not just in attack but also in defence. He did very well against Marcelo.Now we need a brave performance in Madrid to achieve what nobody thought we could do. I want to go to the semi-finals!
BUT ZIDANE WANTS AN IMPROVED PERFORMANCE IN MADRID
I'm not happy with how the game went, especially the first half. That's what happens when you don't play with intensity from the start. We have to rest and think about the return leg because we could still turn the tie around. That's the great thing: you can have a bad night but the return is still to come.Wolfsburg took the lead by doing very little but football is like that. It wasn't about a lack of confidence. We knew it would be a difficult game and that's what we got. Now I'm going to ask the same of our players that I want from our fans: We have 90 minutes to try and realise our objective. We need to be united.We cannot be satisfied with this result. We knew how tough it was going to be and we were prepared for this. But we've had problems with our fitness tonight, due to a hard match against Barcelona.We don't have the result we wanted; we didn't expect a 2-0 loss here.
BLANC BLAMES HIMSELF
I'm responsible for all this, for sure. And now I have to analyse the reasons for this defeat and find solutions for the second leg.
It's not a good result. I don't know if it has to do with nervousness but we made a lot of technical mistakes, especially for City's second goal – and we all know the importance of away goals. Looking at the stats, we played the match we wanted to, but we made mistakes, in part due to City's quality. Zlatan [Ibrahimović] went through a bit of everything tonight. He missed a penalty, then had a huge chance ... and just when you thought it wasn't his night, he scores! It's not the first time we concede goals at home – quite the opposite – but we proved we can score away too. So if we manage to give the same performance, without committing the same mistakes, we can go through.Tonight's two absentees [Marco Verratti and Javier Pastore] will not be available for the return leg. We dominated yet conceded two goals, and on top of that we'll have two players suspended for the return leg – David Luiz and Blaise Matuidi. But I think it's possible. It'll be complicated, but it's possible.
PELLEGRINI STILL CAUTIOUS
This quarter-final remains open. We still have 90 minutes ahead of us in Manchester but this is a good result. In the first half, if we want to win, we cannot make the kind of mistakes we did here. But we are trying to win the game from the first minute, it is the way we play.It's never easy to leave here with a draw, against a very good team with very good players. We scored two away goals which is very important. And yet the tie remains open. Anything is possible for both teams.There are 90 minutes left and we must give a good performance if we want to go through. Now it's Paris's turn to come and play at our ground. They are a team who know how to play and how to get good results. We will need to improve defensively, as we made some big mistakes.
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