Bayern Munich 1-1 Manchester City (1-4 on aggregate) (Haaland 57′, Kimmich 83′)
ALLIANZ ARENA — Bayern’s loyalists will stress that they had plenty of opportunities to provoke thoughts of the unthinkable. Bayern’s critics will point out that they missed all of them.
On a night when one of the Champions League’s great survivors needed to knock down the door, or smash open the cracks that appeared in Manchester City’s resolve, they only have themselves to blame. Pep Guardiola is close enough to a tenure-defining treble that he can smell it.
For City, you can easily upsell this as resilient excellence or excellent resilience, because of and despite the pressure they were put under. They were forced to swallow pride and compromise at times, clearing the ball wherever and whenever they could, but this tie was decided on a handful of decisive moments. Ultimately, City won every one of those moments.
If good fortune is involved, it is pushed down the pecking order below skill, endeavour and unshakeable belief. And at some point, Erling Haaland is going to score.
Who knows if the Bayern supporters ever really believed. On the U-Bahn from Sendlinger Tor they drank and clinked bottles and plotted an escape route: immediate assault, early goal and then the gradual increase of the pressure on a team who have gremlins in this competition. But these instructions were issued with a sense of desperation and a twinkle in the air.
Manchester City are too dangerous, too savvy and too well-prepared to cave in the Bavarian rain. It doesn’t matter how many glam rock or power ballad anthems you play before kick-off; City don’t get scared anymore.
There were still moments aplenty when they flailed, when Bayern’s band of tricky attacking midfielders and wide forwards left them facing their own goal and forced to sprint. It began with Kingsley Coman stealing behind Nathan Ake, continued with Leroy Sane dashing into space and ended with Jamal Musiala purring in the pockets of space in front of City’s defence.
But they were always going to have to score early; that takes exactness. Coman’s first two breaks ended in a cross just in front of its target and a second just behind. Sane clipped a one-on-one chance wide of Ederson’s post. Ruben Dias blocked a shot on the line and John Stones dived in the way of the rebound.
Twice Leon Goretzka leant back when shooting to force the Allianz Arena into mass groans. It was that sort of night. Joshua Kimmich’s late penalty was deliberately over-celebrated by supporters, a nod to irony rather than hope.
City’s initial method of self-preservation was stifling possession that aimed to smother momentum. Time and again in the first half, they played the ball across the defensive line and then back to Ederson, like your five-a-side team at Powerleague when your legs have gone and you’re trying to catch the referee’s eye to blow the whistle. They did get ragged at stages, particularly when their passes into midfield led to turnovers, but a superpower was always held at arm’s length given the first-leg lead.
And for all Bayern’s breaks, City missed a penalty and scored first. Dayot Upamecano is a magnet for incident and controversy who had already had a red card cancelled for an offside decision before he handled in the penalty area. The current handball rule may create mighty undue punishments, but Haaland is a stickler for fairness. He curled a penalty like a free-kick from 25 yards, far above Yann Sommer’s crossbar. I think we might have set a new high bar for “he is human after all” discourse.
Recent history always suggested that Upamecano would find a way to inadvertently steal the stage. Haaland has enough ways of making you look silly without slipping over in your own penalty area as if knocked from your feet by witchcraft. The difference between Bayern and City over these 180 minutes lies in the ruthless efficiency of the finishing – Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting vs Erling Haaland is an embarrassing mismatch at elite level. So too is Upamecano vs anyone who Guardiola may choose to play in central defence. Can you remember a worse individual performance in a European Cup knockout tie?
There was to be no City statement in Munich, no stamping of authority or stamping of feet, but they did not need one. They did what they wanted to Bayern at home and they did what they had to do on Wednesday evening. With the requisite apologies to those of a Milanese persuasion, the semi-final against Real Madrid will be a contest for the ages.
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