Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti rejected Pep Guardiola's statement that Manchester City has a 1% chance of winning their Champions League play-off second stage on Wednesday.
Ancelotti watched while a late turnaround in the Etihad Stadium Los Blancos earned a 3-2 victory in the first stage, with Jude Bellingham reaching the winner.
Indeed, it was the 40th time that Real has extracted the first stage of a European Knockout podium competition from home, and they have an imperious record in two-legged tires.
They are advanced from 37 of the previous 39 and only failed against Odense Boldklub (UEFA Cup 1994-95) and Ajax (2018-19 Champions League).
Madrid has also only lost one of their six home games for Champions League against City (W3 D2) and dropped 2-1 in the round of 16 in 2019-2020.
The OPTA Supercomputer hands Madrid a chance of winning of 48% to the 29.3% of citizens, but Ancelotti believes that his team has only a small advantage in the draw.
“To be honest, even (Guardiola) does not believe what he said, but I'm going to ask him for the game,” Ancelotti joked in a press conference on Tuesday.
“He doesn't think they have a one percent chance to go further and we don't think we are 99 percent favorites. We have a small advantage because of what we have done in Manchester, and we have to use it to our advantage.
“Learning to play with the advantage is a psychological problem, and it's hard to deal with it. I could come here and say that we have no advantage and will play as if we were 0-0 … But it's Nonsense and nobody would believe me.
“What you can control is the attitude of the team and ensuring that we play the same game as a week ago because it went well for us. But you can't forget that you have the advantage.”
Madrid managers recently met the head of the referee of Spain earlier this week, after the club had filed a formal complaint about the referee's decisions in their 1-0 Leaga defeat in Espanyol earlier this month.
Ancelotti was furious after referee Alejandro Muniz Ruiz chose not to send defender Carlos Romero for a bad challenge on Kylian Mbappe in the game.
Romero would score the only goal of the game, sending an open letter to the Spanish football federation at the beginning of February to request access to audio and conversations between civil servants around the incident.
Ancelotti said, however, that the Champions League had fewer controversial calls, although he still had problems with VAR.
“I do (feel calmer), the statistics speak for themselves. There is less controversy and less intervention because of the VAR (in the Champions League), which only intervenes when needed,” said Ancelotti.
“In the Champions League, only the best referees from every country are assigned, and the quality is very high in this regard.
“I have doubts (about VAR) because I think VAR has taken too much responsibility from the referee. It is a bit of a dangerous system.
“The VAR has been introduced to prevent flagrant and clear errors, not for interventions that are football -related. Often the goal is to remove all the naturalness of football because of an image.”
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