Pep Guardiola had a much easier night than he would have expected as Manchester City reached the Champions League final but he still appeared to end up in an argument with Kevin De Bruyne.
Guardiola would have been very happy with the night’s work that his team had on Wednesday as they made it look easy to rip Real Madrid apart, flipping the script on the team who usually dismantle others in the competition.
The first half was completely dominated by the Premier League leaders with Bernardo Silva grabbing two goals and making the European champions look like a League One side who’d been unlucky enough to draw City in the FA Cup third round.
Things didn’t get much better for Real in the second half either with Manuel Akanji and Julian Alvarez wrapping up the scoring and really handing Los Blancos a beating.
The only thing that made life easier for Carlo Ancelotti’s side was the fact that Erling Haaland didn’t score and De Bruyne had a relative off night.
In fact Guardiola was so unhappy with the Belgian that they ended up seemingly involved in a brief spat with the manager telling his midfielder to pass the ball, with the player appearing to shout “shut up, shut up,” back at his boss, as you can see in the video below.
VIDEO: Kevin De Bruyne appeared to tell Pep Guardiola to ‘shut up’ during heated debate in Real Madrid win
Speaking to Spanish broadcaster Movistar after the match the former Barcelona manager explained that he wasn’t too happy with his team at the time of the argument.
“At 2-0 we rushed a lot,” Guardiola explained.
“Right after the break [Ilkay] Gundogan lost a ball, Kevin made three transitions that weren’t necessary and we rushed a lot when we had to do the opposite, sink them and turn them, sink them and turn them.
“But it’s normal. It gets close, you rush, and it has cost us more, although in general we have had an extraordinary game.”
The midpoint of the second half was when Real had their best spell of the game but in all the Spanish giants still only managed three shots on target.
Guardiola wasn’t happy with De Bruyne. Image: Alamy
It shows you the level that City are operating on and their manager expects when he’s having a go at one of the best midfielders in the world when easily beating the greatest side in Champions League history.
In the end it didn’t matter though as the English side booked a place in only their second final in the tournament, after losing to Chelsea in 2021.
They will face Inter Milan in Istanbul and will be extremely heavy favourites, with fans now desperate to get themselves to Turkey as flight prices begin to soar.
