Pep Guardiola pinpointed the moment his Manchester City team overcame the pressure that they felt from playing serial winners Real Madrid.
Goals from Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus at the Etihad gave the Blues a 2-1 win on the night and a 4-2 victory on aggregate from their Champions League last-16 clash, but they were made to work extremely hard by the Spanish champions.
Guardiola knows better than most how dangerous Real are, and he felt in the first half that the visitors were so relaxed it looked like they were knocking the ball about in a friendly while his team struggled to deal with the big occasions - not helped by a problem the manager himself created with the way he started his wingers.
A tactical change improved that in the second half, but as City kicked off and instantly created two chances that was also important mentally for both teams to show that the hosts would be looking to stretch their lead in the tie rather than simply defend it.
"The first half we spoke to try to play, to attack but it was not possible especially for the quality from the opponents," said Guardiola.
"When you are there on the sidelines and you see the quality, personality, charisma they have - it looked like they were playing a friendly, they've played this kind of event 1000 times.
"We suffered a little bit from the pressure to play with the result and what we have to do but in the second half it helped us to play with the wingers wider and in one minute we had two chances.
"We showed for ourselves what we wanted to do. We showed to our opponents as well what we wanted to do, we didn't just want to defend 1-1, we wanted to score goals. We created enough chances to score more goals, unfortunately we couldn't do it. [Thibaut] Courtois made an incredible save. It was more than deserved for us to be in the next stage."
