Man City 4-0 Real Madrid (5-1 on aggregate) (Silva 23′, 37′, Ajanji 76′, Alvarez 90+1)
Five games stand between this Manchester City team and greatness. A little over three weeks. To the Amex, to west London, to Wembley, to Istanbul. So close they can touch it, can feel it, can smell it. Immortality within their grasp.
Inter Milan and Manchester United between them and the Champions League and FA Cup trophies. Chelsea, Brighton and Brentford all that remain in the Premier League with only three points required. Five teams between them and a Treble that has not been witnessed since Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United in 1999 in a season that will never be forgotten.
They will probably not allow their minds to wander to that place just yet but this group of players are now this close to being for ever remembered as one of the game’s great sides, of any era.
How can anyone stop them when they are this good? Painfully good. Almost unfairly good.
Real Madrid reduced to rubble, to 11 spectators who just happened to have found special golden tickets in their chocolate bars before kick-off that let them play on the Etihad pitch for 90 minutes in a Champions League semi-final.
In the first 15 minutes of the game Real Madrid’s players completed 13 passes. Thirteen. You can read that again and again and still it won’t seem real. Not even one pass per minute. It’s Real Madrid! It’s Luka Modric and Toni Kroos and Karim Benzema. You don’t treat football royalty like that. Not King Carlo.
Ancelotti a four-time winner managing in his 191st Champions League game, on a night that moved him one clear of Ferguson as the coach to have stood on the touchline in the most matches in the competition’s history.
Nights like this simply aren’t supposed to happen. After 37 minutes Manchester City had scored twice, Thibaut Courtois had pulled off two other world-class saves and Ederson had barely touched the ball.
In fact City’s back three had practically no defending to do.
Meanwhile, Erling Haaland was on a revenge mission to make up for his disappointment of the first leg. When Jack Grealish popped in a cross he was practically on the goal line and had he placed the header anywhere but at Courtois it would’ve gone in. His second header was better, harder, faster, it was back across Courtois’s goal and the keeper was wrong-footed but somehow managed to paw it wide of the post.
When the goals came they seemed almost too easy but then nobody can survive the siege Real Madrid faced in that first half. Concentration slips, panic takes hold, mistakes creep into the space you didn’t realise was left behind you.
And Bernardo Silva was there to punish them. In an age of supreme athletes and abnormal abs Bernardo, with his slight frame, unruly beard, those wild eyes, carries the air of a player who stays up late the night before and rolls out of bed five minutes before he’s required to kick a ball.
For the first he dwelt masterfully, silently, stealthily in the space behind Eduardo Camavinga, Kevin De Bruyne found him with a discreet pass and Bernardo sold Courtois one way then swept the ball in the other.
For the second, Grealish, who was having a ball dancing through Real Madrid’s players, teed up Ilkay Gundogan and though his shot was blocked Bernardo was there to carefully nod the ball into the near-empty net.
The intensity, the aggression, the ferocity of the performance swept through the fans in the stadium. When Kyle Walker sprinted back at breakneck speed to dispossess Vinicius Junior when he was initially in behind him it was celebrated almost like it was a goal.
One of the few criticisms of Pep Guardiola during his years in Manchester is his tendency to overthink things in the big moments, yet he has got them so right this season. The thrashing of Arsenal that virtually decided the title race. This second leg vs Real Madrid had the same feel.
After the onslaught of the first half the second was more controlled, more considered. Courtois stretched out a knee to force another Haaland chance onto the crossbar but they got the goal to kill the tie with 15 minutes remaining, then toyed with Real Madrid’s corpse a little bit more with a fourth in stoppage time.
Guardiola is now one game away from the final trophy to elude him at Manchester City. And inching his way ever closer towards becoming the greatest of all time.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/Bws6FZP
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