Manchester City will always have Paris, and as a consequence might yet have something greater to celebrate in Istanbul.
Two second half goals leave them 90 minutes from a first Champions League final. And this after falling behind to a PSG team that threatened to overwhelm them in an opening 45 minutes full of ominous starbursts from you know who.
The placing of City as some kind of plucky underdogs is an odd error. Faux humility is hard to pull off when you are spending the king’s gold. In talking City down Pep Guardiola invites the possibility that some of his players might take the sentiment on board. For much of a torrid first half that is how it looked.
The first contest was to see who could look the most insouciant? Who could walk to the middle as if they were taking the dog for a walk? Kylian Mbappe won hands down. That cheeky look and all. Oh fancy seeing you here, Kev. Where’s Raheem?
An early blip that would portend the thrust of the half, Rodri dispossessed in the middle of the park inside 90 seconds. PSG broke rapidly with Neymar posting the first shot on target. City responded as they have these past four months by taking ownership of the ball. The difference here was the refusal of the opponent to shrink. PSG were content to let City paint by numbers until opportunity knocked.
Once again the quick feet of Neymar forced City backwards, drawing a fine save from Ederson. It was more than a shot across City’s bows. It was a test of City’s mettle. How would they react to a team refusing to bow its head, to be cowed, a team that was prepared to match beauty with audacity?
The question would become even more acute when Marquinhos headed PSG ahead from a whipped Angel Di Maria corner. That kind of intervention was a staple of yesteryear but in the modern game has become a delicacy rarely seen. The City defence was caught flat-footed, none more so than keeper Ederson, as Marquinhos diverted the ball into the bottom corner.
City’s imperious stride was unpicked. They looked suddenly uncertain. The confident ball-on-a-string precision became a patchwork of errors. Infused with belief, PSG racked up the pace. Marco Verratti, Di Maria, Leandro Paredes took hold of midfield. Neymar was full of it.
Paredes might have made it two with another header from a corner. City were being smashed out of shape. In the Premier League, City have grown accustomed to supremacy, afforded in part by teams who fear the consequences of risk.
PSG thrive on rolling the dice, Mbappe and Neymar the antidote to the high press and swagger of the Guardiola model. Unaccustomed to being on the back foot, to being mentally dominated, City looked increasingly ragged. Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo, proto wingers in the Premier League, barely crossed the half way line in the first half once City had fallen behind.
The Pythagorian stranglehold that City ordinarily impose is not so easy to pull off under pressure. City needed a giant to emerge to remind them who they were, to impose their identity and method on the contest. Fate was calling out to Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden or Riyad Mahrez to make a difference and rescue the night.
It was not until the final five minutes of the half that City began to resemble the confident bunch that dominated the opening quarter of an hour. Foden flashed a fine shot straight at Keylor Navas. Better.
City appeared first for the second half. Or were PSG just messing with them, disrupting by absence? The tie was only 25 per cent done, plenty of time for City to rediscover themselves and net that precious away goal.
There was early promise as City fired up the rondo in the Paris half. Cancelo was back in offensive mode, giving City more potency and width down the left. City still had to find the final ball, but at least they had the foot down. And in retaining purposeful possession, City were making PSG work harder, not to mention make mistakes.
De Bruyne fired an acrobatic bicycle kick narrowly wide. Mahrez and Walker combined at speed down the right to force a captain’s clearance from Marquinhos. By increments City were edging closer. Parity was finally theirs in the 64th minute. Let’s call it a ghost strike, a looping pass by De Bruyne into the box that was never intended for the net but evaded everybody, including Navas, who could only watch as the ball flew past him into an unprotected goal.
Just as it was in the first half the complexion of the match was changed by the goal. The sky blue carousel was now fully optimised. Control was City’s. The swagger was back. Five minutes later Navas was picking the ball out of the net a second time, beaten to his right by a free-kick from Mahrez. It was a decent strike, made to look even better by a defensive wall that symbolised a team suddenly falling apart.
Worse was to follow for PSG with a straight red given to Idrissa Gueye for an appalling tackle on Gundogan with 11 minutes remaining. The error was compounded by the tactical removal of PSG’s most effective player, Di Maria, in favour of defensive midfielder Danilo. PSG held on without further damage but Istanbul looks a long way off for them.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2RbYaAA
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