Tomorrow night’s Etihad clash is then followed by Sunday’s huge Premier League home game against title challengers Liverpool.
Pep Guardiola’s squad then jet out to Madrid for the deciding second leg of our Champions League with Atletico a week on Wednesday before we tackle Liverpool again, this time at Wembley in the FA Cup semi-final.
It’s a mouth-watering run of high-profile fixtures.
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But though the stakes couldn’t be higher, Bernardo says the City squad are relishing both the pressure – and the lure of trying to secure what would be the Club’s first-ever Champions League crown.
“It’s not just another game - it’s very important for us,” Bernardo declared at Monday’s pre-match press conference ahead of the Atletico clash.
“Only Scott Carson and Pep have won (the Champions League). The club has never won it. I haven’t and most players haven’t. We haven’t been able to. It lacks.
“We will do our best to try and make the fans happy and proud about this.
“It’s a goal - a thing we really want to achieve. No-one knows what we will achieve but what we can promise to our fans is we will try as hard as we can to achieve that. It’s something we really want. There’s nothing more we can do.
“All we can do is our best, work hard every day and help each other win as many titles as possible.
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“The players are used to it (the pressure). It’s a good sign because it means we are there in the last two months.
“We are there to fight for titles. If we had easy fixtures and games that didn’t matter it would be good. We want to fight. We enjoy it.
“We want to face the best teams in the best competitions.”
City came agonisingly close to Champions League glory last season only to be edged out 1-0 by Chelsea in last May’s final.
However, now in his sixth season at the Club, the Portuguese midfielder believes City couldn’t be better prepared to try and create history in Europe’s elite tournament.
“The team I see today is a very well prepared team for these kind of moments and games,” Bernardo added.
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“We were a great team five seasons ago but the team now is much better prepared for these moments. It’s an improvement, definitely.
“It comes with experience. We had our disappointments and we learned from that. The team is ready to do a good performance in this competition. We know each other better.
“First year we were together, when I first arrived, we had a lot of new players who had just come to the Club.
“The manager had only had a year - now it’s five, six years. We know what we need in every phase of the game. We know what to do in good and bad moments, it comes with experience.
“We keep learning from our mistakes and that is a good thing.
“Atletico are a great side. They have lots of fans. They continue to win, are champions of Spain and have to do their work well.
“Pressure on both sides but the players are used to this pressure.”
