Rude awakening for City as champions bow out to Madrid on penalties
Pep Guardiola’s dream of an unprecedented double treble died at the quarter-final stage of the Champions League last night when, despite almost complete domination over Real Madrid, his side exited on penalties.
Bernardo Silva and Mateo Kovacic both saw penalties saved in the shootout, and Ederson even scored one for City, before Antonio Rudiger beat the Brazilian keeper with the final effort, clinching a 4-3 win.
After taking an early lead, Real fought as desperate rearguard action as they may ever have done, not so much parking the bus as leaving a fleet of them abandoned in their penalty area. In their glorious European history, Real cannot have had turned in many performances this negative.
Despite that, City’s equaliser eventually came after 76 frustrating minutes when substitute Jeremy Doku’s cross forced Antonio Rudiger into Real’s first defensive mistake of the evening, a poor touch which Kevin De Bruyne latched onto in an instant to lash the ball into the roof of the goal.
City had not lost a Champions League game at the Etihad for 2,037 days, dating back to September 2018 when Lyon won a group game here.
And they had not lost a Champions League game home or away in nearly two years, a run of 22 matches unbeaten, dating back to defeat at the Bernabeu when Real knocked City out of the semis in 2022.
Put another way, since Guardiola last tasted defeat in the competition at home, his adopted homeland is on its fourth Prime Minister, an idea of how long that 30-game unbeaten spell, 28 of which had ended in victories, has lasted.
But 12 minutes into this absorbing second leg tie, defeat looked very possible as City showed a level of naivety that was stunning, given that recent track record.
Dani Carvajal’s long,
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