“In football anything is possible,” was Pep Guardiola’s rallying cry and while Manchester City failed to pull off a Lazarus act for the ages, this was a definite one-off wonder of a contest that thrilled all witnesses.
Particularly, the first 45 minutes of mayhem headlined by Vinícius Junior apparently being ruled offside by the referee, Clément Turpin, then onside, which meant Bernardo Silva was then penalised for handball, sent off, and the Brazilian then scored from the spot. Further entertainment also derived from a Guardiola yellow card, Erling Haaland’s equaliser, and a slew of goalmouth incident that mostly continued after the break – including late finishes from Rayan Aït-Nouri and Fede Valverde that were ruled offside, and one from Vinícius that counted.
The bottom line is this: at the final whistle City were unable to overturn the 3-0 first-leg deficit and so are out, and Real Madrid through to the quarter-finals.
To prosper City required a comeback as scintillating as the 2011-12 title-clinching win over QPR.
To try to engineer this, Guardiola’s linuep was less adventurous than last Wednesday’s 3-0 losing XI, the directness of Savinho and Antoine Semenyo discarded for the guile of Rayan Cherki and Tijjani Reijnders. Marc Guéhi and Nico O’Reilly were also out – and Matheus Nunes and Aït-Nouri in.
