Romanian referee Istvan Kovacs will take charge of the second leg of the Champions League play-off between Real Madrid and Manchester City on Wednesday. The 40-year-old has officiated Madrid matches in the Champions League on three previous occasions,

The third and most-recent time the Romanian referee has come across Manchester City came in the same campaign, and in a meeting between Pep Guardiola’s side and Real Madrid at the Semi-Final stage of the competition.

Real Madrid and Manchester City meet a week after a thrilling encounter in Manchester saw the reigning champs Real fight back late on to secure a 3-2 advantage heading into the second leg of their Champions League knockout phase playoff.

Real Madrid and Manchester City will clash in the second leg of Champions League action on Wednesday at the Bernabéu.

The two most recent winners of the UEFA Champions League will battle it out on Wednesday in the second leg of this playoff. The loser will make an unexpected early exit from this year's competition. Last week's absorbing first encounter at the Etihad Stadium saw Jude Bellingham give Real Madrid a 3-2 away victory with an injury-time strike,

Real Madrid have won the away first leg of a European tie on 40 occasions. If Pep Guardiola wants a sense of how hard the task ahead of them is it is perhaps encapsulated in one statistic -- only on two of the previous 39 occasions have Los Merengues been eliminated from European competition.