Manchester City had 60% of the ball. They had 16 shots to Real Madrid’s 11. They won on xG, taking an agreement of different calculations, around 3.1 to 1.6. But they will go to the Bernabéu one week from now driving just 4-3 and, likely, with an inauspicious feeling of a recognizable history being worked out.
Madrid have won four Champions Leagues in the previous 10 years. They have once in a long while, if at any point, been the best side on the planet in that period. In Cristiano Ronaldo’s nine years at the club, they brought home just two La Liga championships. They couldn’t deliver reliably to the point of overwhelming the association but, some way or another, in the Champions League, in what had forever been their competition, they obtained outcomes.
Here and there it was down to rivals, frequently Atlético, yet in addition now and again City and Wolfsburg, freezing at key minutes. In some cases it was down to amazing blunders from adversaries: Pep Guardiola going gung-ho in 2014, Mehdi Benatia’s silly foul on Lucas Vázquez in the 2018 quarter-last, then the Loris Karius deviation in the last. Frequently it was down to splendid people – Ronaldo, Luka Modric, Gareth Bale, Sergio Ramos – accomplishing something splendid. They tracked down a way.
This season, the inclination has been brought higher than ever. This is madridismo in excelsis. Madrid have lost at home to Sheriff Tiraspol. They have been to a great extent outflanked for long spells by Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea. They have over and over appeared to be near the very edge of surrendering the objective that would, finally, carry reality to bear. Yet, similar to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, they some way or another can’t be done off. Thibaut Courtois continues to make astounding recoveries. Luka Modric continues to play noteworthy passes. Contradicting goalkeepers continue to commit exceptional errors. Also, in particular, Karim Benzema continues to score exceptional objectives, 14 of them now in the opposition this season, nine out of five knockout games.
This shouldn’t work. The midfield is excessively old. Dani Carvajal looks shot. David Alaba appears to be an old 29. Whenever a group press them, they look shook, similar to a dame auntie bothered by the cheek of a posse of imps she’s startlingly experienced in the road. And afterward Benzema envelops his foot by front of his marker and guides a theoretical cross in off within the post with a volley of uncommon deftness, accuracy and nuance and the dynamic of the game has changed completely.
Sooner or later, unquestionably, conviction in your capacity to accomplish something electrifying won’t be sufficient. Sooner or later rivals won’t botch the kind of opportunities that Riyad Mahrez did (two times) and Phil Foden did (two times) and Aymeric Laporte did. Eventually, Madrid will experience the ill effects of which there is no approaching back. But, once more, they have gotten through a battering having supported generally negligible harm.
Guardiola is a realist. He studies and explores. He talks about the requirement for control. There is a body electorate that appreciates his football yet tracks down it somewhat cool, excessively tenuous, excessively cerebral. He will think back over that first leg and realize his group might have won by three or four. He will consider the shot Mahrez cut into the side-netting when he might have squared it. He will consider Foden’s sidefoot towards a generally unfilled net hitting Carvajal. He will consider how Vinícius Júnior couldn’t have ever dominated Kyle Walker the manner in which he did Fernandinho for the Madrid second and realize his side ought to have better offset with the likely return of both best option full-backs for the subsequent leg. He might think about how lamentable it was that the ball struck Laporte’s hand subsequent to looking off his head for the punishment, and might be feeling better that the away objectives rule does not exist anymore.
He will know that assuming his side play to similar level in Madrid, they ought to arrive at a second successive Champions League last. In any case, what should sneak profound inside is an information that something like this holds happening to his side against large groups in defining moments. Therefore he overthinks, on the grounds that over and over throughout the course of recent years his sides have played splendidly in defining moments, botched opportunities and afterward been scattered by adversaries who appear to be more heartless all of the time.
It occurred for his Barcelona against Inter in 2010 and against Chelsea in 2012. It occurred for his Bayern against Atlético in 2016. It occurred for his City against Monaco in 2017 and against Tottenham in 2019. Over and over, his side have played staggering football for spells of key games and not advanced.
That is the reason Guardiola doesn’t simply send his side out to play in their standard manner any longer. History recommends it isn’t to the point of being bettering. That is the reason he consumes such a lot of exertion in attempting to track down ways of forestalling the resistance countering. That is the reason he upholds a convention of control. It’s a decision to which experience draws a ton of chiefs, that in defining moments winning the shot-count 5-0 than 20-5 is more secure.
But football, this delightful, awful, limitlessly complex peculiarity, loaded with incongruities, oddities and balanced governance, that proceeds bravely to resist the endeavors of cash to deliver it submissive, can’t permit that: it has made it so every endeavor Guardiola makes to fight off risk bounce back upon him and achieves his defeat, the overthinking against Liverpool, Lyon and Chelsea.
Reasonableness says that City have a lead, that they’re the better group, and that Madrid can’t continue to pull off a similar stunt in Europe. Be that as it may, with Guardiola in Europe, reasonableness seldom appears to have a lot to do with it.
