Claudio Marchisio believes Juventus have shown they've matured in Europe this season.

Juve lead their Champions League tie with Real Madrid 2-1 after the first-leg.

"We've made very important strides this year," Marchisio told Sky Italia.

"If you look back on our journey, we started with defeats to Olympiacos and Atletico Madrid, so it wasn't easy to get past the group stage.

"We're a compact group, which has grown slowly, culminating in this semi-final, where we showed against Real that we can give anyone a game.

"Now we wait to play the return leg, but we're definitely not going to sit back for 90 minutes in order to go through. We'll go there with our character and style of play to try to make the final.

"This has been a culmination, because in the first [Scudetto] year, we didn't play in the Champions League, the second we managed to reach the quarter-finals and last year, even though we were criticised, we almost made it to the Europa League final in Turin.

"Even in that case, there was a path of growth where we got to play big teams and get to the latter stages.

"We have to make sure we don't make the mistake we did in the second leg against Monaco, where we didn't play, because we've been waiting for this, and you can't do that against Real Madrid."