Balance, trust, courage: Marco Rose is hoping for the best performance of the season.
The Champions League anthem will be played again under the Manchester night sky on Tuesday evening. The “Skyblues” meet the “Red Bulls” – Manchester City receives RB Leipzig (8.45 p.m. / Amazon Prime). For the Saxons, this goose bumps moment after stepping on the lawn at the Etihad Stadium should be the beginning of an even longer journey in this premier class season – the Leipzig team want to reach the quarter-finals.
However, the task for the team around coach Marco Rose is not an easy one, because Manchester City are the current English champions on the other side, who are still unbeaten in this Champions League season. Rose, however, knows what his team is going to face, as he said at the final press conference on Monday: “In the end, against such a top team, it’s about the right balance, a lot of trust, courage – and our best game of the season would be a good fit too.”
The chances after the first leg are not bad anyway. The people of Leipzig impressed in front of their home crowd and in the end earned a deserved 1-1 draw, in which the people of Messestadt dominated for half time and even had chances for a home win. This performance gives Leipzig courage, self-confidence comes from last weekend’s home win over Borussia Mönchengladbach (3-0).
An important factor for the outcome of the game is also City’s attacker Erling Haaland, who remained pale in Leipzig three weeks ago: “Everyone knows Erling’s quality, we were able to defend it well in the first leg. But you can never completely cool him down. We have to do everything as a team,” said Rose, for whom not only Erling Haaland meets Leipzig, but a lot of world class around it.