Real Madrid, as unfancied at this stage of the Champions League as they have been in a generation, blowing the doors off Manchester City and eviscerating millions of brackets in the process, Federico Valverde delivering the best hat trick Spain has seen since Rivaldo against Valencia a quarter of a century ago. Why this is nothing more than the latest chapter in the ever wacky, never predictable rivalry that has become something of a Champions League clasico, right?
Well, no, not really. Even while it was hard to perceive that it would all go so badly wrong for Pep Guardiola tonight, something like what just happened to City was hurtling along the tracks at a pace that would have Rodri and Bernardo Silva as powerless onlookers. It’s a role they’ve been getting familiar with of late. What only a few years ago was a European champion powered on exceptional out of possession structure is now a team who have proven themselves to have a soft underbelly for over a year now.
It all pivots on that Rodri injury. When they had the Ballon d’Or winner as the shield that guarded against turnovers, opponents were getting nowhere. Since his ACL injury in September 2024, there is no worse team in the Premier League at defending against the counterattack than City, who have allowed 13.05 xG to their top-flight opponents in that time period. Rodri’s return has not really eased the issue for one very obvious reason. He’s not really Rodri yet. He might never be Rodri again, no matter the advances in recovery from knee troubles he is a 29-year-old with a lot of games in the tank who looks like he needs plenty more to get back up to speed.
Without him, the out-of-possession system requires full steam from everyone else but Erling Haaland and Jeremy Doku are not effective pressers. Antoine Semenyo probably will be when he has a preseason under his belt but for now City were far too easy for Madrid to bypass. The goals they scored were not counters but they came from the sort of rapid progression up the field that so rarely used to be possible, even for the best sides, against a Guardiola team.
City had pace and verticality that could be deployed in service of any number of attackers. They might have been missing Kylian Mbappe and Jude Bellingham but tonight the decrease in the population of superstars rather served them well. This was Vinicius Junior’s attack to run and he did that quite exceptionally. Even so, he found himself eclipsed by the brilliant Valverde, whose every action seemed intent on punishing the inexperience of left back Nico O’Reilly. The youngster was always going to be on the back foot when Thibaut Courtois sprayed such a gorgeous pass 60 yards up the field but watch that back, was there really no way for Haaland to be an iota more punchy in his pressure on the Real Madrid goalkeeper?
These are the sort of questions Haaland doesn’t usually have to answer. After all, he does the most valuable thing on a football pitch, scoring a goal, and he does it with more frequency than anyone else. Or at least he did. This might have been the first European night in sky blue where Haaland has failed to register a shot but it was the second full match this year where he has not swung an effort at goal. This is not supposed to happen to City’s No.9, who seemed to lose the run of himself around Christmas. Before then he was averaging an outstanding 0.88 non-penalty expected goals per 90 minutes across all competitions. Since then, he has cratered to 0.36. The guy’s being out-xGed by Raul Jimenez and Florian Wirtz.
CBS Sports
That’s a real problem when Guardiola has constructed an attack that has had games that were a bit “Whenever Haaland isn’t on screen everyone should be asking where is Haaland.” When the big man doesn’t start Omar Marmoush is doing quite nicely in his stead but when he does it is as if every other City attacker sees their role as the facilitating of shots for the No.9. And when they can’t get the ball to him, they have no chance of coming back in the game.
At 3-0 down, City had five shots worth a combined 0.23 xG. The dramatic late twist that the history of this rivalry has conditioned you to expect never came. The things you instinctively knew should have happened — Real Madrid’s stars delivering on the big night, City being reliant on the form and fitness of a few big stars — actually did happen. Maybe that burst of predictability was just the latest great twist in the Champions League’s most enduring drama.
