Roberto Mancini believes his expensively-assembled Manchester City squad can win the Champions League.
The Italian won the club’s first trophy for 35 years with the 2011 FA Cup and followed it up with a maiden Premier League title last season. But Mancini, whose side face German champions Borussia Dortmund tonight, is now looking to take the next step and deliver European glory.
The former Inter Milan boss failed to make any significant impact on the competition during four seasons at the San Siro and saw his City side crash out in the group stages last year.
City lost 3-2 at Real Madrid in their opening group game and need a win at the Etihad Stadium tonight to get their European adventure back on track. “I hope I can improve my record in the Champions League
and we have arrived at the time where we can win the Champions League,” said Mancini.
“Like we have improved in the Premier League, we need time to improve in the Champions League but we don’t have a lot of time — only five more games. We need to not concede easy goals to drop points like we did against Real Madrid. If we want to go through, we need to improve very quickly.”
Sheikh Mansour has pumped over £1billion into the club to transform them into Champions League contenders and Yaya Toure knows they must deliver on that investment.
“It is a massive game,” said the Ivorian. “We will need to work hard because Dortmund are a fantastic team. We need a good result. We have a good squad and we need to deliver. We understand the position we are in after we lost in Madrid.
“We are now playing our first home game and we want to show that we know we made mistakes in Madrid.”
