Hegemony is not what it was. Over five winless games and one humiliation the neck of the Premier League has been well and truly wound in. All that pearl-clutching at Uefa over the financial heft of football’s mother country looks entirely misplaced.
Perhaps they should relent and allow English clubs competing in Europe to spend more than they earn (as teams not in Europe are allowed to do) to bring them wholly to heel.
Despite the mortification of Tottenham in one quarter of Madrid and the humbling of Manchester City in another, the commentary died hard.
If Richarlison had netted for Spurs with the score at 4-1 against Atletico on Tuesday, who knows what might have happened was the sentiment poured through the ether by TNT’s Spanish deniers.
Twenty-four hours later in Paris, Glenn Hoddle shared the view that Chelsea had nothing to fear from Paris Saint-Germain and, with the score at 3-2 with four minutes to go, will fancy their chances in London.
His deliberation was interrupted by a flash of brilliance by Khvicha Kvaratskhelia that took the score to 4-2. He would rubber-stamp that with another in added time, three goals in 15 minutes rubbing English hauteur into the dirt.
Premier League leaders Arsenal required a late goal to exit Leverkusen with a draw in the early match, a feat beyond Liverpool in Tuesday’s hors d’oeuvres in Istanbul, where again the commentary team struggled to reconcile what we were seeing with their framing of the tie.
Even though they led early, Galatasaray did not do so by virtue of their own quality, according to the general tenor of the commentary, but as a result of the mistakes made by Liverpool, who would shortly set that right to reaffirm eminence.
Except they didn’t because Galatasaray were a handful spearheaded by that noted penalty box vandal Victor Osimhen, supported by a swarm of fleet-footed attackers with whom the English audience was largely unfamiliar.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia scores again in stoppage time to make it 5-2
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There is always next week, of course, when the teams gather for the second legs. Liverpool will hope Anfield stills the feet of the opposition, and Arsenal have the power to progress should they overcome the creep of performance anxiety triggered by fear of defeat, which seems such a problem for them.
It would be negligent not to reference Newcastle’s draw with Barcelona. But for a clumsy challenge on Dani Olmo in the sixth minute of added time that brought Lamine Yamal into the game from the penalty spot, St James’ Park would have been celebrating a deserved win. In that encounter at least, the hauteur was all Barca’s.
The strength of the Premier League is its depth, made so by the equitable spread of the vast broadcast wealth it attracts. This is a feature worth applauding. And it must be said, the sense of superiority it engenders is not shared in the same way by the players and coaches, who experience elite competition in a different way to supporters and broadcasters selling product.
The capacity of Real Madrid to set aside domestic form in the Champions League, especially for the visit of Manchester City, would not have been a shock to Pep Guardiola, who, like all the English coaches must negotiate the consequences of that deeper domestic depth, fatigue, injuries, etc. Nevertheless, he could have done without a first half hat-trick from Federico Valverde.
The performance of Real’s Uruguayan skipper was a reminder that underpinning the Galactico model is a base level of grunt required of all successful teams. At least Guardiola did not choose this game to change keepers, although he might had he had prior warning of Gianluigi Donnarumma’s weird reluctance to use his left arm for the first goal.
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The selection of Antonin Kinsky over Guglielmo Vicario at the Metropolitano had the feel of an ill-judged gamble by the ill-fitting Igor Tudor even before he lost his footing and then his mind. Similarly in Paris, where Liam Rosenior’s decision to axe the imperfect Robert Sanchez for a keeper untested at this level always felt like an abstraction too far by a young coach seeking to prove his credentials.
Filip Jorgensen demonstrated his technical qualities in denying Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembele with fine saves, but suffered a mental lapse with the match poised at 2-2 by gifting the ball to an attacker on the edge of his box. His subsequent fragility was then exposed by the Georgian Messi.
As former England manager Graham Taylor was fond of saying, the bad days are never as awful as they seem and the good never as great as they appear. The English had better hope there is something in that when the teams reconvene. Hubris is the hardest pill to swallow.
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