De Bruyne and Foden celebrate after scoring goal / Photo: Collected
Pep Guardiola said Manchester City felt the pressure of expectancy in the Champions League as they needed Phil Foden’s 90th-minute winner to take a slender 2-1 lead from the first leg of their quarter-final tie against Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday.
City have now won 27 of their last 28 games in all competitions to remain on course for a historic quadruple of Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup, and League Cup.
But they have failed to get beyond the last eight in the Champions League in each of Guardiola’s four previous seasons in charge.
The sides will meet again in Germany on April 14 with the winners facing Bayern Munich or Paris Saint-Germain in the last four.
Dortmund are at serious risk of missing out on the Champions League next season after slipping seven points adrift of the top four in the Bundesliga.
However, the visitors started brightly until Emre Can gift the ball away to Riyad Mahrez and City launched a ruthless counter-attack.
De Bruyne, Foden, and Mahrez exchanged passes before the Belgian tapped home from close range.
City thought they had a great chance to double their advantage moments later when Rodrigo went down under Can’s challenge inside the area and referee Ovidiu Hategan pointed to the penalty spot.
Hategan, though, rightly overturned his call on a VAR review in the first of a number of dubious decisions from the Romanian official.
His next big call ruled out a Dortmund goal when he adjudged Jude Bellingham to have fouled Ederson as he dispossessed the Brazilian and tapped into an empty net just before half-time.
This time VAR could not intervene as Hategan had blown before Bellingham rolled the ball home.
ARR
