With his team in danger of missing out on a top-four finish in the Premier league, Manuel Pellegrini's best chance of leaving an indelible mark at Manchester City is to win the Champions league.
City's domestic campaign has been badly damaged over the past two months by three home losses that left Pellegrini's team only one point above city rival Manchester United. Those defeats followed City's announcement that Pep Guardiola would replace the Chilean manager at the end of the season.
Pellegrini took the blow, but he soldiered on, leading City to its maiden Champions league quarterfinals. City now travels to Paris Saint-Germain in a matchup between newly rich clubs that are looking to finally break through in Europe's top competition.
"We're full of hope and full of desire and we can't wait for the games to come around," Manchester City winger Jesus Navas said. "It's really nice to be part of this experience and part of this team that has achieved it. It's all about going step by step, and with a good performance in this round, who knows where we can get to."
City showed greater maturity on the European front this season and prepared for the trip to the Parc des Princes with a 4-0 win over Bournemouth. But it travels to the French capital missing its experienced backbone, with Vincent Kompany and Yaya Toure set to be out.
"like City, PSG is also desperate to win the Champions league, the main goal set by its wealthy Qatari owners. But since they took over in 2011, laurent Blanc's team has failed to advance past the quarterfinals, having lost to Barcelona twice and Chelsea in 2014.
IBRAHIMOVIC ON FIRE
PSG will be without midfielder Marco Verrati, but it can count on the in-form Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
With his contract expiring at the end of the season and his professional future still unclear, the Sweden international looks as motivated as ever.
Ibrahimovic scored a hat trick on Saturday that helped him join Pedro Pauleta as the club's all-time best scorer at the Parc des Princes. He took his league tally for the season to 30 and has now scored 144 goals in 170 matches with PSG.
HART BACK
Pellegrini might be able to start his No 1 goalkeeper after Joe Hart trained with his teammates on Tuesday.
The England international has been out since picking up a calf injury against Manchester United on March 20. Midfielder Fabian Delph, sidelined with an Achilles injury since early February, also took part to the training session.
If Hart can't recover in time, Angus Gunn will be on the bench as a cover for Willy Caballero because third-choice keeper Richard Wright has not been registered with the Champions league squad. The 20-year-old Gunn is the son of former Scotland goalkeeper Bryan Gunn.
WOlFSBURG FACE REAl
WOlFSBURG: Real Madrid and Wolfsburg are coming from vastly differing backgrounds ahead of their first meeting in Wednesday's Champions league quarterfinal first leg in Germany.
Ten-time winner Madrid is on a six-game winning run, the latest a morale-boosting come-from-behind 2-1 victory at Barcelona in Saturday's "clasico" while reduced to 10 men that ended its old rival's Spanish record unbeaten streak at 39 games across all competitions.
Wolfsburg slumped to a 3-0 defeat at Bayer leverkusen on Friday, its third Bundesliga game without a win, leaving the side seven points off the last Champions league qualification place after a lackluster domestic season.
Not only recent history is against the Volkswagen-backed club. Wolfsburg, in the knockout stages for the first time, is playing its first-ever European Cup quarterfinal. Madrid will be in its 33rd.
Despite its recent good form, Madrid's best chance to salvage an otherwise disappointing season remains in the Champions league.
Zinedine Zidane's side is still third in the Spanish league, seven points behind Barcelona, which also has a better head-to-head record.
WOlFSBURG WIlTING
Despite progressing in Europe's premier competition in only the club's second Champions league appearance, Wolfsburg has disappointed in the German league after finishing runner-up last season, when it also claimed the German Cup.
Ten losses and eight draws in 28 Bundesliga games suggest Wolfsburg is far from formidable and that the team was perhaps over-reliant on Kevin De Bruyne, sold in the summer to Manchester City. The Belgian playmaker had chipped in 13 goals and set up 27 more in 52 Bundesliga games for the side.
KING CRISTIANO
Few players rise to the occasion like Cristiano Ronaldo, who stole the show in the "clasico" by scoring the winning goal with five minutes remaining.
Having dealt the reigning European champion a loss in the Spanish league, Ronaldo is primed to add to his Champions league record tally of 91 goals against Wolfsburg.
The Portugal forward, leading Europe's top-tier competition with 13 goals already, is four short of matching his own single-season record of 17 in the competition.
He has found the net 14 times against German opponents overall and is on a scoring streak with eight goals in his last six matches, including two goals against Roma in the round of 16.
While Ronaldo provides a one-of-a-kind threat up front, Madrid's success in the competition is also thanks to Keylor Navas's goalkeeping.
The Costa Rica 'keeper has kept eight clean sheets in as many appearances in the Champions league and is only second to Jens lehmann's record of 853 consecutive minutes without conceding a goal.
All three goals allowed by Madrid in this edition of the tournament came when backup Kiko Casilla played in a 4-3 win at Shakhtar Donetsk in the group phase.