MANCHESTER — They really thought they could Real Madrid mighty Real Madrid? Manchester City showed all the qualities that have been the blueprint of the European champions: fly on the seat of your pants, play your best football in patches, gamble that your luck will hold for the rest, score your best chances, rely on the other team missing theirs in increasingly baffling fashion. You might not like it, but this has been what elite Champions League performance has looked like for the last nine years.
That is what City delivered — not good football, not in the slightest, but the Champions League meta. The outcome? They got Real Madrided.
With the second leg to come in the Santiago Bernabeu next Wednesday, Madrid look well placed to secure aggregate victory over City for the fourth time in the six knockout meetings between these two teams over the last nine years. Those matches have provided all sorts of implausible breaks, more in the holder’s favor than not. Think Rodrygo’s double at the death, the 33 shots resulting in one goal last season. The ball never seems to break City’s way against Madrid.
This time, it did more often than not. Yes, there was Kylian Mbappe shinning home acrobatically but Madrid’s No. 9 had missed a handful of more presentable chances. For once on the biggest of European nights, it was Madrid, not their opponents, who contrived to underperform their expected goals. Carlo Ancelotti’s men ended up on 3.42, half of Manchester City’s 1.6 came from the contentious penalty Phil Foden won for Erling Haaland right on the edge of the box. Another eighth from their other goal, Haaland staying onside by a slither when Jack Grealish’s ball over the top had found Josko Gvardiol.
At the other end, Madrid seemed to be finding ever more imaginative ways to not score. Twice in the first half, the ball was on their left flank and, en masse, City seemed to forget that there was another side to the pitch. First, Ferland Mendy couldn’t quite turn half a penalty area into a goal. Somehow nor could Mbappe.
Rodrygo and Vinicius Junior were flying to the byline, their crosses finding no one where usually Mbappe or Jude Bellingham would be in just the right spot. Vinicius might have had a penalty in the 10th minute but for an offside that was tighter than it needed to be. For 20 minutes, City were totally off their game in the way that Madrid usually are in the minutes leading up to a Karim Benzema hat trick.
The reigning champions are hardly the most diligent pressers, but early on they were Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund reincarnated. They didn’t have to do anything to make that happen. Bellingham and Rodrygo simply placed themselves in the City third and waited for someone to give them the ball. By the time this game was up, such indiscretion in possession would cost the hosts dearly. In the first half, they somehow got away with it.
City were not without their redeeming moments. For a time after Haaland’s opener, their aggression paid dividends. Guardiola might have named five center backs in his starting XI, but they soon coalesced into an extremely aggressive 2-3-5, his fullbacks inverting into midfield with John Stones while Bernardo Silva joined the last line. When the ball zipped around the Madrid third between the 20th and 40th minute, you could almost kid yourself you were watching a rerun from two years ago.
It would be a delusion though. Too often City looked like the bad Madrid teams, the ones totally reliant on individuals to create moments of magic, whether it was Kevin De Bruyne dropping deep to ping a ball upfield in the lead-up to the opener or Manuel Akanji and Nathan Ake hurling themselves in front of shots. Their plans for getting the ball into good shooting positions looked sketchy at best.
By contrast, it was Madrid who looked like the real team. Their defense began at the front. There were times when Mbappe and Vinicius sagged in their off-ball effort but they had a plan to block the paths into midfield when Ederson started City’s attacks, to challenge his passing. That would ultimately lead to their second equalizer. Their winner came because their star forward was prepared to chase for a 50-50 ball at the last second. A backline cobbled together from their midfield and their academy got all the protection they needed.
“Defending is not an individual problem,” said Ancelotti, “It’s a team problem. Today, we were a team, we defended well. The four defenders who never played together were able to play a good game because the team worked really well defensively.
“It’s a surprising game that we played tonight. I didn’t think that at this time the team were able to make such a sacrifice as they have done this evening.”
The Italian is often viewed as more of a man manager than master tactician, but he knew what he wanted from Madrid and he got it.
“The plan was to press high when Ederson brought the ball out from the back and to have a medium compact block,” he said. “To have our two forward players on the inside to not allow our central midfielders to press, to make sure they were closer to the back line. With the ball, we wanted to make the pitch bigger, to have control of the ball, not to be frustrated and look for the pass.”
It was Madrid who had the plan, one that City had seen coming but were unable to negate or react to. It was Madrid who were the superior team, the best version of this team that Guardiola has faced at City. Madrid were the team with the gameplan, their hosts the ones with the giant Rodri tifo. Do it for him, do it for the vibes seemed to be their approach. Well, it always seemed to work for Madrid.
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