We look ahead to Wednesday’s Champions League game at the Etihad Stadium with our Manchester City vs Inter prediction and preview, as the sides meet for the first time since facing off in the 2023 final.
Manchester City vs Inter Stats: The Quick Hits
- Manchester City are favourites to make a winning start to the Champions League, beating Inter in 59.8% of pre-match simulations by the Opta supercomputer.
- Excluding shootouts, Pep Guardiola’s City are unbeaten in their last 23 games in the Champions League, with 16 wins and seven draws.
- Inter have won away at four different English teams in the Champions League and are looking to become the fourth team to win at a fifth.
Match Preview
Manchester City meet Inter in their opening Champions League match and will be looking to make a strong start to their campaign against the side they beat to win their first title in the competition in 2023.
Pep Guardiola’s team have made a perfect start to their latest Premier League title defence, earning four wins from four, including a 2-1 comeback win over Brentford in their last outing to remain top of the league.
Inter, on the other hand, have had contrasting fortunes. They may have made an unbeaten start to the campaign (W2 D2), but Simone Inzaghi was left frustrated after a wasteful performance almost cost them against Monza on Sunday.
He will be hoping that a positive start to the Champions League will settle some of the early nerves, though they do have one of the more difficult fixture lists, with RB Leipzig, Arsenal and Bayer Leverkusen among their slate of eight matches in the revamped group stage.
However, Inter are not known for fast starts in the Champions League, having only begun one of their last nine campaigns with a win, beating Tottenham 2-1 in 2018-19 (D5 L3).
Their record of three losses in their last 20 matches in the competition (W11 D6) may look strong on paper, but it is nothing compared to their hosts.
Excluding penalty shootouts, City are unbeaten in their last 23 games in the Champions League (W16 D7), and a win on Wednesday would put them within one match of equalling the longest unbeaten streak by a team in European Cup/Champions League history (25 games by local rivals Manchester United in September 2007-May 2009).
And with Guardiola at the helm, you would not put it past them. Among managers to oversee 50+ games in the competition, the Spaniard has the highest win percentage at 63.7% (109 wins in 171 games).
Erling Haaland has surpassed even his highest expectations, with a lightning-quick start to the season. He has scored 41 goals in 39 appearances in the Champions League to date, and if he scores in this game, it will be his 100th strike overall for the club.
The Norwegian will likely be coming up against Yann Sommer, who had the highest save percentage of any goalkeeper in the tournament in 2023-24 (86% – min. two apps), with the Swiss shot-stopper saving 25 of the 29 shots on target he faced last term.
City will be almost at full strength for the match, with only Nathan Aké and long-term absentee Oscar Bobb expected to be missing, while Tajon Buchanan is the sole injury for the visitors.
Manchester City vs Inter Head-to-Head
The only previous European encounter between City and Inter was in the 2023 Champions League final, which the Citizens won 1-0 thanks to a Rodri goal.
It was a close contest in Istanbul, with Inter squandering a number of late opportunities to send the match to extra-time.
Inter have won away at four different English teams in the Champions League (Newcastle, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool). They could become the fourth team to win at 5+ English teams, after Barcelona (seven), Real Madrid (five) and Bayern Munich (five).
While City have never faced Inter on home soil before, they went unbeaten across all five of their matches at the Etihad in the Champions League last season, winning all three in the group stage.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Manchester City vs Inter Prediction
The Opta supercomputer has Man City as clear favourites to get their Champions League campaign off to a winning start, with the hosts winning 59.8% of our 10,000 pre-match simulations.
Inter, meanwhile, earned the victory in just 19.0% of those simulations, so they may be satisfied enough if they can claim a draw, which is given a 21.2% chance.
And it is not too much of a surprise that City are so highly rated in this match, as the tournament projection model has them as the favourites to win the whole thing at 25.3%.
But do not count Inter out. They are one of only two other teams (along with Real Madrid) to have a greater than 10% chance of winning the trophy at 10.9% and the supercomputer rates them as more likely than not to make at least the quarter-finals.
Manchester City vs Inter UCL Squads
Manchester City: Stefan Ortega, Ederson, Scott Carson, Kyle Walker, Rúben Dias, John Stones, Nathan Aké, Josko Gvardiol, Manuel Akanji, Rico Lewis, Josh Wilson-Esbrand, Mateo Kovacic, Jack Grealish, Rodri, Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gündogan, Bernardo Silva, Matheus Nunes, Phil Foden, Oscar Bobb, Nico O’Reilly, James McAtee, Erling Haaland, Jérémy Doku, Sávio
Head Coach: Pep Guardiola
Inter: Yann Sommer, Raffaele Di Gennaro, Josep Martínez, Andrei Radu, Denzel Dumfries, Stefan de Vrij, Francesco Acerbi, Benjamin Pavard, Carlos Augusto, Yann Bisseck, Federico Dimarco, Matteo Darmian, Tomas Palacios, Alessandro Bastoni, Piotr Zielinski, Davide Frattesi, Tajon Buchanan, Hakan Çalhanoglu, Kristjan Asllani, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Nicolò Barella, Marko Arnautovic, Marcus Thuram, Lautaro Martínez, Joaquín Correa, Mehdi Taremi
Head Coach: Simone Inzaghi
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