Trapped by Real, the Citizens let slip the final ticket they already had. Knowing in turn a scenario that we see rather arise in the lower series. And that should never happen…
Pep Guardiola consoles Phil Foden shortly following the final whistle. Elimination is hard to take for Manchester City, still qualified for the final in the 89th minute, when they were leading 1-0 following winning the first leg 4-3.
Action Images via Archyde.com
With us too, we know very well that this must not happen because we keep repeating it weekend following weekend. From the coach to the substitutes and the bar attendant, everyone agrees… But, despite all the usual recommendations, it still happens in the 4th or 5th league, sometimes even higher in the pyramid of game categories.
Everyone can recount the memory of the incredible overthrow of a team scoring two goals in the last seconds when they were still trailing 1-0 on their lawn a few moments earlier. It’s not common but it can happen. And when that happens, we praise the character of the team which never gave up, having believed in it until the end, as much as we stigmatize the lack of concentration of the opposing defenders, heads in the air to the point no longer knowing why they are there.
But what we generally see rather on our country grounds, most often in front of a few scattered people, arrived on Wednesday evening in worldview in Madrid on the lawn of the Bernabeu in the semi-final second leg of the Champions League. An incredible outcome, commensurate with what this double clash of madness will have been (3-4, 3-1 ap).
In the role of the victim (to say the least consenting), a Manchester City believing that it has already put 9 toes – and maybe even both feet – at the Stade de France, the scene of the final on May 28. It was to forget, fatal error, that opposite, there was this Real capable of everything, including making possible the impossible, which the White House has made its specialty. After warming up once morest PSG in the quarter-finals and Chelsea in the semi-finals, the Merengues took cover once more once morest the Citizens, who found themselves trapped as a team from the 5th Vaudois league would have been when they did not just didn’t have the right.
Dramatic intensity
All the coaches in the world will tell you: getting two goals in the 90th minute, in less time than it takes to concede them, should never happen, let alone in these circumstances. But City stars made the sin of hubris and mistakes usually attributed to Sunday morning footballers. Wanting too much to play at all costs to the point of tarnishing the 2-0 security several times, the Citizens, wrongly convinced that nothing might deflect them from the goal, forgot to manage the acquis correctly.
Served by the extraordinary performance of Courtois and his giant shoe on the capital stoppage of the 87th minute, the incredible feat sent us back to our condition of lovers of emotions that only sport can offer in an intensity equally dramatic. This is undoubtedly the universal beauty of football, which is needed as much during a grandiose Champions semi-final as in the lower series. When the irrational invites itself to offer an extraordinary emotional lift.
“I didn’t think I was in the final, we were close. But they know how to write history, we must congratulate them.
It will therefore be Parisian paradise – and a delicious reunion with Liverpool – for Real. Hell and hell for City, finding a way to transform a success that we would have agreed to qualify as deserved into a quack unworthy because inadmissible. Remained very dignified in defeat, Pep Guardiola was not going to look for excuses or evasions by paying tribute to the winners. “I didn’t think I was in the final, we were close to it, he had to agree in front of the media. But they know how to write history, they should be congratulated…” And the manager of Skyblues to let go of this resounding confession as a final sanction. “Then there were these two minutes…” 120 seconds of total blackout.
The class of losers referred to the contagious happiness of the finalists. The magic of football as it can be experienced there and here, in Madrid as in Tolochenaz, Puidoux-Chexbres or Gimel.