Federico Valverde was the Real Madrid hero who wrote himself into this storied club’s folklore with an immortal first-half, 22-minute hat-trick that decimated Manchester City and cast Pep Guardiola as a tactical novice.
Each of Valverde’s goals were a diagram of his supreme skill and City’s chump-like defending that leaves their hopes of a quarter-final berth near extinct. If Vinícius Júnior had netted a second-half penalty Real could all but celebrate progression, yet if City score early in Tuesday’s return who knows.
Guardiola promised “no surprises” tactically yet spurned a golden chance here. Real missed the injured Kylian Mbappé, Rodrygo, Jude Bellingham, Álvaro Carreras and Éder Militão, so Álvaro Arbeloa’s resources were stretched.
Factor in how the absent Mbappé’s 13 strikes led the competition and the seven-goal Erling Haaland was back after not playing in Saturday’s FA Cup win at Newcastle, and the record 15-times winners could be billed as underdogs. By the close this felt fanciful and so Guardiola’s mission is to revitalise a group who fly home severely bruised at the campaign’s defining phase.
Real’s pre-kickoff entertainment roused the senses. It featured a reel of Champions League final goals – including Gareth Bale’s showstopping overhead kick – plus a volume-shattering play of the new anthem with a lyric, “historia por hacer” (more history to be made) which Arbeloa’s men embodied as they ripped City apart.
