One or two days to recover, said Pep Guardiola. It seemed very optimistic, after such an ordeal.
Guardiola must hope his team can pick themselves up to go again, but in reality he faces arguably the biggest challenge of his managerial career galvanising Manchester City for Sunday.
Newcastle are the opposition. A test, on current form. Then it is Wolves, on Wednesday. Tricky, Wolves. Since 2017-18, City's record against them is played eight, won five, lost two, drawn one.
There are not many teams City have failed to beat in almost half their recent meetings. Across the same period, City's record versus Arsenal is played 13, won 12.
And as we are often reminded, there are no easy games in the Premier League. Certainly, there are no easy games when a team has just had its heart ripped out by Real Madrid.
It is not just the energy City expounded in the Bernabeu Stadium that may affect them, but the emotion.
Pep Guardiola faces the toughest challenge of his career in lifting Manchester City off the floor
City stars were devastated after being knocked out of the Champions League by Real Madrid
But with a Premier League title on the line, Guardiola has to get his players emotionally ready
Guardiola must fear that some of his players won't be able to blithely shrug off their colossal disappointment and regroup for the trophy that remains.
Might Madrid, in securing their place in the Champions League final, have also gifted the Premier League title to the team they will face that day, Liverpool?
Jurgen Klopp has achieved much in his life. Arguably his greatest triumph, though, was cajoling his Liverpool players to maintain their ferocious intensity the year after losing the title by a single point to City. Liverpool lost one game and came second.
They had the league's best defence and scored 89 goals. Their 97 points would have won the league in any other season, bar two.
Yet Klopp not only drove his team to win the Champions League that year, he took them into a successful tilt at the title the following season.
That is the test for Guardiola now. Can he pick his players up from what must be a new low to close out the title race? This is not like last season's Champions League final defeat.
One of Andy Murray's best qualities was not resenting being in the same era as the 'Big Three'
Others, like French player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (left) did not view things the same way as Murray
They do not have a summer to rationalise, to absorb the pain. They landed in Manchester in the small hours of Thursday morning, they will have returned to training on Friday at the latest. There is little time to process.
And it is painful, a loss of this nature. It requires formidable strength of character. One of Andy Murray's greatest qualities was not resenting being born into the same era as Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal.
Murray never contemplated what he might have won with more fortuitous timing. He remained undaunted by the daily challenge. The way he saw it, he couldn't change his circumstances, and competing with three of the greatest tennis players ever brought out the best in him.
It was not the same for others. 'It's tough to get a reward when you play with those guys,' said Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who rose to the rank of No 5, but no higher. 'I work hard every week. I give a lot of myself every day. I never get rewards.'
Equally, while there are many mitigations for the rapid decline of golfer David Duval — he won the 2001 Open, but never again after that, and lost his tour card in 2011.
But beside the injuries and personal problems, it is a fact he came along at the same time as Tiger Woods and spent a crushing amount of time playing well and missing out. He shot 14 under at the Masters in 2001, a score that would have won the tournament in any year but eight, and lost by two shots to Woods.
Lewis Hamilton's struggles at Mercedes could be down to struggling to get over the trauma of last year's title being snatched from him by the rogue decisions of race director Michael Masi
Even the greatest can be affected by the pain of defeat. Lewis Hamilton has a rotten car this year and Mercedes cannot compete. Yet he is also struggling against team-mate George Russell.
Might it be that he is still pining, wrestling with the anguish of having a record eighth drivers' championship stolen from him by the rogue decisions of race director Michael Masi?
It has been wondered how affected Guardiola must be by his recent Champions League disappointments, but the more acute problem is his players in the here and now.
By the time City play Newcastle they could again trail Liverpool by two points, if Klopp's men beat Tottenham at Anfield. Last weekend, faced with a similar challenge, City swept Leeds aside with confidence. But that was before this crushing reversal.
Sitting in the Bernabeu on Wednesday, Guardiola reflected that Madrid's experience had counted most. 'They had been through this, we hadn't,' he said. Yet the same is true of Sunday's fixture.
It is almost not Newcastle that Guardiola has to worry about. He has 72 hours to get Madrid out of his players' systems, or risk losing much more than one match.
Real Madrid's supposed ownership of the Champions League is in its way a self-fulfilling prophecy. Casemiro could easily have been dismissed in the first half against Manchester City for two cynical fouls on Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden.
We can argue that if he was booked for one, he might not have made the other, but the fact is he wasn't shown a yellow card for either.
Referee Daniele Orsato seemed intimidated by the Bernabeu and the fame of the team he was handling. Well, one of them at least.
He wasn't the reason Madrid won, but he certainly helped.
Referee Daniele Orsato (above left) was overawed and ultimately helped Real Madrid progress
Incredibly, Diego Maradona's 'Hand of God' shirt sold for £7.1m at Sotheby's. Less surprisingly, a delegation from Argentina turned up prior to the auction claiming ownership.
The shirt was put up by Steve Hodge, the former England player who was lucky enough to swap with Maradona at the end. Initially, Maradona's family tried to claim his possession wasn't authentic.
Now, the Argentinian football federation speaks of it like the Elgin marbles, as if it was plundered, not exchanged by two competitors after a match.
The Argentina FA's actions over Diego Maradona's £7m shirt (above) are typical but saddening
'He is selling something that belongs to Maradona and the AFA without authorisation,' a
