Pep Guardiola had talked about the necessity to endure earlier than this recreation. OK then. It’s a deal. This was a gripping, gruelling, sky blue migraine of a soccer match, one which Manchester City actually didn’t need to lose, however which by some means all the time felt prefer it was slipping from their grasp even throughout a second half when Metropolis gave the impression to be very slowly, fastidiously, methodically pulling the legs off this Actual Madrid workforce.
There will likely be no double-treble now after Madrid’s victory on penalties. However Metropolis nonetheless performed like champions of Europe for lengthy durations. They took Madrid right into a horrible place. These should not footballers accustomed chasing and masking, ready for the blow to fall. At instances it felt as if Actual spent the final hour of this recreation desperately making an attempt to take it to a replay again at their tiny floor with a corrugated roof.
Even the shoot out was a wierd affair. Bernardo Silva produced a dismal effort. Mateo Kovacic hit the goalkeeper. Ederson scored. Antonio Rüdiger slotted the winner and celebrated with a power-slide throughout the Etihad turf.
At which level it was exhausting to not marvel precisely how Metropolis had managed to lose. Little doubt there will likely be blame to be parcelled out, even when it feels a bit unfair on the finish of a recreation that would simply as simply have fallen Metropolis’s method. However then, this was additionally the form of event Erling Haaland, for instance, was purchased to make a distinction in.
Haaland’s recreation in numbers doesn’t look nice: 5 photographs, one on the right track; 5 passes in 90 minutes. However he really performed fairly nicely by his personal latest requirements. He looped a header on to the bar. He bullied Nacho a bit, utilizing his physicality as a urgent weapon, one thing he hasn’t all the time performed.
However the reality stays Haaland nonetheless hasn’t scored a aim for Metropolis in any of those key spring video games within the final two years. He got here off on 90 minutes with one aim from open play in his final 9 video games for membership and nation. Haaland is all edge, bolt-on edge, a footballer who exists to present edge. And edge is the one factor Metropolis lacked right here.
This was certainly not this purely his doing. Jack Grealish ran loads, and likewise stopped and jinked inside loads. He has one Premier League help this season. Phil Foden has carried the midfield aim menace however was on the periphery right here. Kevin De Bruyne did his finest to make the distinction and it was fascinating watching him apply his shoulder to the wheel of this recreation, operating up and down the scales, the music nonetheless there, simply maybe not fairly with the identical straightforward precision as of late, his contribution an act of will as a lot as inspiration.
Was there one thing to be made from John Stones’s absence? In all probability not. There had been a obscure sense of huge Pep knockout vitality earlier than earlier than kick-off with the information Guardiola had left Stones out of the beginning XI. Was this the return of the dreaded overthinking? Not likely. Manuel Akanji was a straight swap. We’re case post-overthinking as of late. If something we’re into underthinking, 4 huge centre-halves and a goal man.
It was Madrid who settled faster, taking the lead with a aim that owed loads to Jude Bellingham’s lovely contact within the centre circle, pulling the ball out of the sky with a cushioned half-volley lure and funnelling the ball to Vinícius Júnior on the fitting. He measured the proper snaking cross for Rodrygo, who battered the ball at Ederson, then slid the rebound into the nook.
And Madrid had been good within the opening half hour. Carlo Ancelotti strolled his touchline, all in black, white shirt, three quarter size wool overcoat, wanting like a billionaire undertaker. The deep blue shirts sat deep, unfazed by Metropolis’s stretching of the pitch, able to play in small packs once they took the ball.
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The climate modified on the break. Metropolis got here out like a prepare, urgent excessive. All of a sudden the Actual goalkeeper Andriy Lunin was flapping within the traditional “European” model so beloved of Eighties TV commentators.
Nonetheless Metropolis had been simply very barely off. Closing passes had been overhit. No person fairly discovered their second. Guardiola’s first substitution was key. Jérémy Doku got here on with 72 minutes gone. 4 minutes later he was simply too fast within the tiniest of areas, tippy-toes battering the turf, making area to cross low and exhausting. De Bruyne took Rüdiger’s clearance and completed superbly, shifting the angle of his foot to clip the ball excessive into the roof of the web.
By that time Madrid had performed themselves into a really deep defensive gap. It was gripping, gruelling, agonising stuff, soccer as staccato attrition. Possibilities got here and went. Metropolis had 33 photographs, solely eight of them on the right track. There is no such thing as a actual narrative of their defeat, past a well-recognized sense of Actual Madrid’s personal will to energy; and naturally, that lacking edge.
