Welshmen Gareth Bale reckons Manchester City can finally be considered as one of the top European football clubs and warned that they will only get stronger in time to come.
Bale's Real Madrid team failed to get past Joe Hart and his City teammates as both sides played out a 0-0 draw at the Ethihad Stadium on Tuesday in their Champions League semifinal first leg match.
With Cristiano Ronaldo pulling out after failing a late fitness test just before the game, it was down to the likes of Bale, Karim Benzema and Luka Modric to carry the Los Merengues in attack.
While they did threaten the City goal on numerous occasions, David Silva and Sergio Aguero were also a handful at the other end of the park.
With the second leg coming less than a week later on May 4 at the Bernabeu, Bale knows it won't be a walk in the park against Manuel Pellegrini's men.
"They are here on merit. They haven't got here by luck. I'm surprised they haven't got to this stage of the Champions League a little earlier, but they have great players, the club is still growing and they are going to be a force to be reckoned with," Bale told the Manchester Evening News.
"They are going to be extremely difficult to play in the second leg, but we're confident we can win.
"You can see they are a very good team and they have some great players -- we know a lot about them and we watch them all the time in Spain.
"Obviously I've also played against them before and they are a really strong team, but so are we. The semifinal is really nicely poised for the second leg."
Bale is expected to start that game alongside the returning Ronaldo who is racing against time to be fit for that game.
But the Welshman refuted claims that Madrid go into the second leg as hot favourites, and has warned his teammates to keep things tight in defence.
"I don't know if we will think we are favourites, but we know everybody likes to put those tags on games like this," he said.
"I think it will be another evenly contested game and a very difficult one. I think the most important thing was we have not conceded a goal in the first leg and we are in a much better position in this game than we were in the last one against Wolfsburg, so we're confident."
The winners of this tie will go on to play either Atletico Madrid or Bayern Munich in the final on May 28 at the San Siro. Diego Simeone guided his team to a 1-0 victory over Bayern on Wednesday to set up a tantalising return leg next week.