Teenager born in a refugee camp only moved to left-back in October but now looks forward to a Champions League final“eep meep.” In one old-fashioned phrase uttered immediately after the win at Borussia Dortmund that marked the home straight towards the Bundesliga title, Thomas Müller succinctly coined the flavour of Bayern Munich’s season. Yes, he was talking about one player, rather than the team, but that player has come to personify the side that has lifted itself from autumnal ignominy to the verge of being cast into this mighty club’s hall of fame.“For me it’s a dream come true,” said Alphonso Davies in the aftermath of Wednesday’s 3-0 win in the Champions League semi-final against Lyon, which saw Europe’s inexorable...
Manchester City should have done better than the quarters but without star turns, like those of Neymar and Ángel Di María, it is an uphill battleFinally, for the first time in their history, Paris Saint-Germain are one victory away from glory in Europe’s top club competition and from realising the great ambition of their Qatari state-owned benefactors, Qatar Sports Investments. They have won 18 major domestic trophies since QSI bought the club in 2011, but the Champions League is the hardest trophy to buy. Just ask Manchester City.When Neymar moved to PSG from Barcelona for £200m three years ago he was seen as the final piece of their Champions League jigsaw, and I am sure he would have expected to...
Bayern’s latest elite utility man is increasingly outgrowing one of the more imposing club shadows of recent timesAfter months of cliche and assumption, they’re finally getting their due credit. It may not have quite been Bayern Munich at their best, remarkably, but Friday’s 8-2 win over Barcelona was all about context, the seismic impact of the result and the stage forcing the world to recognise that they are not just the habitual Bundesliga behemoth.Even Borussia Dortmund’s chief executive, Hans-Joachim Watzke, talking at the press conference to present the club’s annual financial results, was forced to refer to the current crop as “the best team ever to play for Bayern”. If Philippe Coutinho’s strangely inevitable cameo was the door hitting Barça...
With Bernardo and David Silva, Riyad Mahrez and Ben Foden left on the bench, City spent much of the Champions League defeat to Lyon crouched behind a defensive guardYou failed. No matter. Fail again. Fail in pretty much exactly the same way.How many times, Pep, how many times? The idea that Pep Guardiola over‑complicates knockout games has become such a truism it seems impossible a manager of such clarity of thought could still be following that pattern; still finding ways to insert his own anxieties,his maniacal intellectualism into the fine details of elite knockout football. Related: No excuses for Manchester City's defeat to Lyon, says Pep Guardiola Related: Dembélé at the double as Lyon crush Man City's Champions League dream...
The humiliation by Bayern was a capitulation of a major side on a level not seen since the World Cup semi-final in 2014Barcelona cannot say they were not warned. Since 2017, their exits from the Champions League have been becoming increasingly embarrassing. Humiliation has followed humiliation. Perhaps finally now, after their 8-2 humbling against Bayern, their worst defeat since 1946, a performance that became shameful in its ineptitude, action will be taken.Occasionally matches take place that are the meeting of two historical trends. Here, on the one hand, there was the tactical dominance of Germany, the high line and the hard press, the slick muscularity, the rapid exchanges of a well-structured attack, that have become increasingly familiar at the highest...