Manchester City could have sent the visitors packing in the first hour but Karim Benzema’s Panenka sets up Bernabéu returnWith a quarter of an hour gone at the Etihad Stadium, on a night when this entire lighted stage seemed to ripple and shudder, Phil Foden did something lovely. Haring off in pursuit of a high, lost, floated pass destined for the bleachers, Foden scampered on, feet battering the turf, calibrating angles and arc, and pulled that floated pass out of the sky like a man charming down the moon with a stick.His first touch cushioned it, his second fizzed it the through the middle of the sea of lost souls previously known as the Real Madrid defence. A muddle of...
As this week’s semi-finals lineup shows, the Champions League is no longer a fair competition but in the grip of a few franchisesThe two best teams in Europe, the most successful club in the history of the competition, a gritty outsider – in some ways the lineup for this week’s Champions League semi-finals is perfect. Each offers in addition an intriguing subplot: Pep Guardiola fighting the curse of overthought, Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool chasing an implausible quadruple, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema raging against the dying of the light, the frankly hilarious prospect of Unai Emery returning to Paris for the final and making a point to Paris Saint-Germain, a club that never took him seriously (perhaps he could have...
Liverpool are getting recruitment right, Newcastle have a new hero in Bruno Guimarães and Christian Eriksen can get betterIn the summer of 2020, Liverpool were big favourites to sign Timo Werner from RB Leipzig before the move fell through when Jürgen Klopp could not assure his fellow German of regular first-team football. Liverpool fans have spent the last couple of seasons relieved that the striker chose Chelsea instead, his numbers way down on what they were in the Bundesliga. Werner remains a maddening but intriguing presence. Watch the denouement of the FA Cup semi-final. In the final 10 minutes, he overruns the ball to ruin a fast break, has the energy to get back and halt a Palace counterattack, is...
Colombian was too quick for a punch-drunk City in the first half at Wembley and could provide the magic Liverpool need to make historyThree minutes into the second half of this FA Cup semi-final Luis Díaz took the ball just inside his own half, looked up and saw in freeze-frame the figure of Fernandinho suspended inches above the Wembley turf, rotated at an angle of 60 degrees to the ground, left leg extended to meet the ball – and in the process to send Díaz in a semi-somersault arc as the frame of Fernandino propelled itself through the space where previously he, Díaz, had stood.It wasn’t a foul, although the next one on Sadio Mané was, a slide into the...
Manchester City’s bandaged-up academy star got into the Atlético Madrid manager’s head on a tense and fractious nightAnd so it came to pass, with 92 minutes on the clock. A match that had simmered, all smouldering, corseted restraint, finally broke down into the nasty, snarky, theatrically overblown free‑for‑all that everyone at the Wanda Metropolitano always felt was on its way.By the end there was talk of a fist fight involving at least two players and the sight of helmeted police sprinting for the tunnel. There was genuine bad blood on the pitch, words and pointed fingers. And above all the spectacle of Atlético’s players shaking their heads in utter confusion, lost in red mist that felt like someone else’s red...