We all know the disastrous challenge that City passed through, which made them not to be in the same shape like previous seasons. City is not yet in form and they are struggling to pick form, which lower their chances of giving is any surprises in this game. City has a very porous defense and Madrid has bunch of strikers that can easily breakthrough City defense to find the back of the net.
The problem now is that City and Madrid's strikers are also sometimes difficult to guess because their performance is still not very consistent. Perhaps in terms of productivity, Madrid are still quite more confident because for now they do not only rely on Mbappe, unlike City, who until now preferred to force Haaland again and again.
In addition, I quite agree for City's defense which is indeed bad at the moment because it cannot be denied that for now there are still a lot of mistakes that are always made by City defenders who sometimes rely on each other or make individual mistakes, it's just that Madrid also has the same problem but the difference is that Madrid has a gap in defense because they have a lot of injured players for now.
But even so, I still expect that in the match later Madrid can qualify for the next phase by beating Manchester City in this play off.
If Ancelotti can get a good defender like Rudiger to hold Haaland in the match, Manchester City will not have an easy time beating Real Madrid, because Haaland is the player who helps Manchester City win matches, but now that Rudiger is injured, I'm not sure if he'll be back before the UCL playoffs. Everyone is only waiting for the date to arrive so they can watch the match, which will be one of the most difficult in the playoff stages. Most people believe Real Madrid will defeat Manchester City because of their recent performance, but this is the UCL, and Manchester City will do everything they can to get to the next round. And Madrid are the king of ucl, they know how to play the competition very well and that is why they have more trophies then every club in the Europe. And since Zinedine won the Champions league back to back for madrid they have not get any coach that do that again for madrid, let see if Ancelotti can break the record and win the title ths season again.