Manchester City 1-1 Real Madrid
Coach Roberto Mancini is targeting Europa League now:
“We will try to go into the Europa League, we need to win in Dortmund – until you reach the semi or the final of the tournament it’s not as important as the Champions League but it could still be an important title for us.”
“We made some mistakes, this group was very difficult and we started the group with defeat against Madrid,” he said.
“We were 2-1 up and we lost – from then on everything was very complicated.
“We wanted to go through, this group was very difficult but in the Champions League you don’t have a chance to recover.
“In the Premier League you have many games to recover, in the Champions League, you don’t.”
Mancini seemed keen not to dwell on the failure to qualify from the group stages for the second successive year and preferred to focus on the challenges that lie ahead.
“This is the second time we’ve played in the Champions League – to win the competition you have to play after February – after that anything can happen, you can improve and you can win it.
“At the moment, I think there are five or six teams better than us in the competition.”
Meanwhile, Jose Mourinho believes that Real Madrid did more than enough to win the game but was pleased with how his team performed on the night.
“We played a great game tonight, particularly in the first half –we did enough to win the game by a comfortable margin – maybe 2-0,” Mourinho said.
“Of course City reacted, they managed to make a bit of a comeback, of course they did – it’s incredible when you look at the array of players they have at their disposal.
Mourinho fielded questions on the managerial situation at City’s next opponents Chelsea, and admitted his sadness at Roberto Di Matteo’s sacking.
“I think that a club must support its manager the maximum they can until the last day when they decide to make a change,” he said.
“Real Madrid and Dortmund are very big teams – from the very beginning we knew a big team would go out at this stage.
“It’s good that it was City as Roberto can work without any problems because, if it was Madrid, the press would not let me return to Madrid.”
