Manchester City return for the second leg next week with an even draw. Photo: Reuters/Juan Medina
There is Real Madrid for every moment of the big games, from chasing and snarling to circling you, passing and running behind you, and next week in their stadium, Pep Guardiola's players must be ready to play in all versions. .
In the first match, Carlo Ancelotti's team demonstrated all their settings. One moment just to survive, and then suddenly start the show. This epic Champions League semi-final is coming into its second leg with the feeling that Manchester City, the great power of English football, have secured an advantage for themselves. Although what that might mean is hard to say. Real Madrid's spell says so much about the unexpected shifts they cause in the game's genesis, a lesson learned hard by Guardiola's players last season.
City will never be able to tell how they went from that confidence in his orientation, with 70 percent possession of the ball, to the fact that all this confidence was swept away by a snap from Luka Modric and a shot from Vinicius. Real can do it, even the City of 2023.
Guardiola's great teams — especially Barcelona's great team — fought back with dizzying fluidity and suffocating possession. A real dynasty of five Champions League winners in nine previous editions does it differently. Their personalities change throughout the match and for much of the first half they even felt vulnerable at times as City's pass sequences intensified and Guardiola's possession machine moved forward.
Even after the home side took the lead in the 36th minute, right-back Dani Carvajal shouldered Jack Grealish — with all the grace and subtlety of a vengeful 1950s centre-back — and sent the Englishman stumbling into the digital perimeter. boards. Toni Kroos and Antonio Rüdiger had the same idea to kick out their former Germany teammate Ilkay Gündogan. These were just the highlights of the first half of the strategic fouls.
Madrid hoped to throw City off balance with serious challenges. Credit: Getty Images/Alex Livesey
Real Madrid suffered under the tyranny of a typical Guardiola in the first half, when City's pass total easily topped 300 and their rivals didn't get half that. For most teams that face City, this kind of first half is usually the end of the story.
However, by this point Real Madrid had scored, a breathtaking counter-attack launched by Luka Modric's first touch to put a broken Eduardo Camavinga back on track. If you describe it in football jargon as a good pass from around the corner, then it is unlikely to be true for the moment of Modric's vision. He rounded the corner and returned from grocery shopping for a week.
This was the moment when the nature of the game began to change. For long periods early in the second half, City struggled to regain anything close to the control they enjoyed before half-time, and they had to live with much of the indignity of staying behind that Real Madrid had previously endured. Ancelotti's players went from a team that didn't seem to really want the ball to a team that didn't want to give it away.
However, City faced every iteration of Real Madrid that night and survived. Kevin De Bruyne equalized when it looked like City had gone astray in the game. They are rarely played in the Premier League, as they sometimes were in the second half. This is City's chance to play at home next week with all the momentum of the marginal advantage that the second leg at your home ground will bring.
It was the toughest game ever for Erling Haaland, a striker who needs some kind of team effort to get him into goal but increasingly has to do it alone. His 21 touches on the night were the fewest of 22 starting, and the key takeaway is that if chances presented themselves on Wednesday, there could be no more than two. The same can be said for Grealish, who started the night skewering Carvajal's blood and then, despite his role in the goal, never got his moment in that high-quality game.
There was little chance for Erling Haaland at the Santiago Bernabeu. Photo: AP Photo/Jose Breton
These are the stakes for Grealish right now. He will have to measure himself against rivals like Vinicius in those fleeting golden years when, like any top player, he will be at the top of the game. Events like next Wednesday will be career-defining nights — maybe the difference between one Champions League title, two — or none. Will he be able to have the same impact on his team as Vinicius?
Big questions for City players ahead of the decisive second leg against the defending champions. Without a doubt, Guardiola believes in his side. This manager, who has long insisted on his right to five substitutions in the Premier League, has not changed all night.
It's not that Real Madrid are far behind in this regard. Of the old guard, Kroos played 84 minutes, Modric three more, and Karim Benzema overall. Real Madrid is a beautiful football team, perfectly balanced between young and old during the ebb and flow of their careers. From the crafts of their old boys and the fresh legs and new ideas of the young. Camavinga played left-back and then midfield and looked like he could play the second leg right there.
The longer Real Madrid keep going like this, bewildering the decline that is always expected the greater the mythology around them. This is, in no small part, what City will face next Wednesday. That nagging fear that there's always one more breath: or, to put it more prosaically, a seventh minute of time is added and Benzema suddenly, inexplicably, went unnoticed at the back post. If City beat Real Madrid in a week, it would seem like the spell had been broken. If any party can do it, it's them.
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