Bernardo Silva believes Manchester City have learned to accept they will have to dig deep defensively in the latter stages of the Champions League and they don't need to dominate possession in order to win.
City advanced to the semi-finals on Wednesday night after a 1-1 draw with Bayern Munich which saw them win the tie 4-1 on aggregate. Erling Haaland scored on the night in Germany before Joshua Kimmich leveled from the penalty spot.
It was one of the Blues' most mature and comfortably handled European knock-out ties of Pep Guardiola's reign as they advanced against the Bundesliga champions fairly easily despite seeing less of the ball in both legs and coming under heavy pressure throughout. Bernardo believes City have learned from their past mistakes in the Champions League to put in a performance of that level.
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"In the Champions League, we learn from our mistakes of the past," he told BT Sport. "What we understand now is that before we used to think that: 'oh no we need to be 90 minutes dominating the game, controlling their final third.'
"In this competition when you play against Bayern Munich, PSG, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Liverpool, whoever, you need to accept that sometimes you have to defend and you have to be consistent, you have to work hard not to give them easy chances and that's what we've been trying to work on in the present because in the past we've had a lot of frustrating nights because of that."
When asked if having a striker of Haaland's reliability helps the team to be able to sit back as they don't have to worry where the goals will come from, Bernardo agreed. The Portuguese continued: "Maybe yes, because we never had that kind of player, we always played even when Kun [Sergio Aguero] was here, he's more of a striker that drops to play with us, and Erling is a special player, a different player to what we had in the past and is someone who doesn't have to touch the ball many times to score.
"He's like a shadow for 85 minutes and then he touches one and it's a goal. Because we have that special player now maybe sometimes we feel a bit more comfortable defending a bit more back because when they give us the space in behind we know we have that animal running in the back. And Kevin as well when he runs through on the counter-attack that special connection between them is very dangerous. So maybe, yeah."
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