Rico Lewis has praised City's mentality, principles and control after securing a place in the last eight of the UEFA Champions League with a 6-2 aggregate victory over FC Copenhagen.

After the 3-1 win in Copenhagen last month, Pep Guardiola‘s men continued where they left off in Denmark, taking an early lead at the Etihad Stadium through Manuel Akanji.

Julian Alvarez doubled the lead shortly after, before Mohamed Elyounoussi pulled one back for the visitors.

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Erling Haaland made it 3-1 before the interval to cement our place in the next round of the competition.

Lewis, who played the entire 90 minutes under the floodlights, was pleased with the manner that the team approached the game.

“I think it’s a game that can easily be comfortable, but today was a very difficult and challenging game just for the fact that we were already 3-1 up,” he said.

“It’s easy for you to take your foot off the gas in these games. If the opposition get a couple of goals then it can turn into an anxious game really quickly. 

“We managed the game really well. The team, even after conceding the goal, got back with the ball and controlled the game from there on.

“It [two early goals] put us in a really good position to take control of the game. We still carried on attacking and creating chances. That’s exactly what we wanted to do today.

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“This is where the big matches that everyone wants to watch come to life and the big players in the team will step up and hopefully win the games for us.”

The youngster also spoke about hitting the crossbar late on in the match, explained his reasoning for giving a young fan his shirt after the game and looked ahead to Sunday’s Premier League clash with Liverpool.

Watch the entire interview via the video at the top of the page.