Manchester City’s European curse continued on Tuesday night after they let a 1-0 lead slip only to slump to a 2-1 defeat at home to Italian champions Juventus.
Manchester City went into the game on the back of a five match winning streak in their domestic league without conceding and were looking good for the win after Giorgio Chiellini put into his own goal under pressure from Vincent Kompany.
Juventus are without a win in their first three games in the Serie A but somehow found a way back into the game after Mario Mandzukic scored from a wonderfully floated ball by Paul Pogba.
Alvaro Morata compounded City woes when he found the back of the net in the 81st minute to condemn Manuel Pellegrini’s side to their first defeat of the season.
“It’s disappointing, I don’t think we deserved to lose,” Pellegrini told BT Sport.
“We had better chances and played better than Juventus. It was a typical Champions League game, both teams didn’t create many chances but we had more possession.
“It was not a tactical problem, Juventus just scored two beautiful goals.”
Yaya Toure has been regularly criticised for failing to bring his dominant Premier League form to showpiece Champions League nights – a perception the towering Ivorian did little to alter as Juve stole the points.
But the 32-year-old felt City’s opponents were fortunate on their part, and pointed towards some poor finishing from his own team.
“I think the Italian team played very well, they defended well and I think they were lucky,” he added.
“I don’t think we played so bad. We missed a lot of chances.
“We just have to be strong and try to bounce back in the next game. We’ve been brave and we have to learn from Europe and try to do it better.”
Manchester City have now fialed to win their opening home game of the Champions League for five straight seasons.
