Goodbye is fun. David Alaba meets Manchester City today (9 p.m., Sky, DAZN) with Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champions League semifinals, and thus the coach whose favorite student he was when he was with Bayern Munich. We are talking about Pep Guardiola, who had the ÖFB team captain under his wing at Munich from 2013 to 2016. “David Alaba is our god, he’s played almost all ten positions, I’m amazed by his versatility,” Guardiola said in 2015.
No wonder the Catalan later made several attempts to lure Alaba to Manchester City. Vain. Ultimately, Real made the race. The 29-year-old from Vienna has not regretted his move for a second. “This club is huge. You can just tell what a charisma Real Madrid has. The club’s history is enormous – and that’s cool,” Alaba said to “Sky”.
Now is harvest time – not only in the “premier class”, but also in the Spanish league. If the leading Madrilenians score a point in the home game against Espanyol Barcelona on Saturday (4:15 p.m., DAZN), they can no longer be caught.
Currently, the focus is exclusively on the showdown with the English leaders, who have only lost one match since February 19 – the FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool (2: 3). Manchester City are hungry for their first Champions League trophy in club history, while Real Madrid have won Europe’s most important club competition a record 13 times.
The last time the two teams faced each other was in 2020. At that time, City won both round of 16 duels 2-1 because Gabriel scored Jesus. The Brazilian striker is in top form now too. On Saturday he scored four goals in the 5-1 win against Watford. Real was allowed to rest at the weekend because there was no play. Alaba, who struggles with adductor problems, was certainly not wrong.
Source: Nachrichten
