![]() ![]() This is what Madrid met, and disarmed, for now, at the Bernabéu, not with magic or a blink in the light from their opponents, but with that layered slow-burn draw that still leaves a razor-edged parity at the Etihad in a week’s time.Clipper burn in dogs occurs after grooming. This City team are as close to a total victory machine as anyone in English football has got in the modern era. But to call it a chance missed, or even a bottle job or a choke, is to fail to see the scale, and indeed the beauty, of the occasion. Add Jude Bellingham to that mix, which may well happen given the current chatter, chuck in Aurélien Tchouaméni and who knows, maybe even Haaland in a few years (Madrid seem to believe this will happen), and it isn’t hard to see another dynasty emerging here.Īt the end of which both teams will be happy with that 1-1 draw, which simply clarifies the task at hand. Eduardo Camavinga, who made the goal for Vinícius, is 20. It is surely time for Brazil to decouple themselves from Neymar just a little, to build a team around this more orderly attacking phenomenon.įor all the enduring parts, Madrid’s team is also being quietly flooded with youth. Vinícius Júnior was the best attacking player on the pitch, confirming his status as one of the genuinely elite creative players in world football, a 22-year-old who continues to add clarity and incision to the most vertiginous occasions. Because Madrid are, lest we forget, exceptionally good. At which point it is worth adding some detail to the scale of that task. It leaves City narrow but also vulnerable favourites to go through. The fact remains a 1-1 draw in Madrid is the best result City have managed so far across the three semi-final games between these two teams. Guardiola instead did something entirely in keeping with his vision of the game a vision will, by its nature, occasionally come up a little cold. Pep explained afterwards that he picked “players who keep the ball” because “if the game got crazy we would not be as good at that as them”. ![]() We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. Lose by the odd goal and yet again this bald fraud has blinked in the eye of the storm, spiked his own guns and all the rest. Win by the odd goal in Manchester and City’s caution in Madrid becomes a genius-level act of game management. This is, of course, totally outcome-based. But it is a useful point of perspective with the task of trying to dissect and anatomise that 1-1 draw already well under way. Instead the lesson of Alaba’s craft, of the entire tone of an occasionally cold, always engrossing draw is that Real Madrid’s success is really not based on magic or witchcraft or some kind of anti-Pep spirit energy but on elite players doing elite things. Nobody was pocketed here or exposed as a fraud. Madrid in midweek has been the elite standard in club football for the past decade. There are reasons why Tim Ream and Angelo Ogbonna are not faces you come across on bravura midweek global TV gigs while a voice shrieks “nous sommes les meilleures” and Manchester City fans dispense imperial V-signs from a pen in the gods. And with all due respect to the defenders of Fulham, West Ham and RB Leipzig, and indeed to the Premier League, where scorelines of 4-3 and 6-0 and 5-3 have become common. The nullification of Haaland was a triumph for Carlo Ancelotti’s defenders, in particular Antonio Rüdiger, who can look frantic and frazzled and, frankly, like he’s playing in a pair of wellies, but is a high-grade warrior when it comes to the detail of one-on-one duels, who grappled and scragged his man to stop him from turning, to the extent that by the end the most noticeable Haaland at the Bernabéu was probably Alfie, captured on film in an altercation in the stands, and who also ended up being manhandled to safety by a powerful-looking man in local uniform. But this was pretty much his night, 90 minutes during which he was as quiet as he has been at any point since the inauguration of the Cruyffian “box” (layman’s version: five big lads at the back) that sparked City’s current steamrollering run. Haaland is too quick, too decisive in his movements. ![]() Haaland’s reaction was probably most telling. But Alaba does have a history of pulling off this kind of last-ditch miracle-tackle. There were urgent low fives as Madrid prepared to defend the corner. Alaba got to his feet and bumped chests with Dani Carvajal.
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