man city played real madrid in the ucl s/f . for a long time now this was the game in which i had not used the remote in the first half . i think the gaurdiola must had read me and his team played proper football . they had a proper no.9 for man city in the match . in my last post about man city i think that i had stressed about de bruyne quality and it was evident in the first half . i dont know but he kind of faded in the second half . man city had lot of opportunities and they missed a lot and it come back to bite them in the back in the second leg or if the result of the tie is decided. last but not the least i had been talking about technical aspects of the game . in the football world technical ability means how pin pointly you can do an aerial pass ( as kroos picked out rodrigo for the first goal)or how well they control that ball ( aerial ball). to be honest nobody cares as to they play that simple football that is play with middle of the foot or control that simple floor pass . if man city had did that properly ( foden ) then i think man city would have had one foot in the final .
real started the game with 4-3-3 formation . man city started the game with the 4-2-3-1 . now in football you have to think about defense while you are on offense and viceversa . real made change in their regular line up . they brought rodrigo in place of casmeiro . the thinking was that they needed quick players who can exploit the high line that man city deploys while on defense. kroos and modric are indespensable while valverde too has made him indespensable because of his hard work . just as real madrid had studied man city gaurdiola too had done his homework . he knew of real counter attacking formation . he knows that vinicius is kept high of the pitch by real madrid for his pace . so he played john stones but he asked stones to be conservative and never tried to go too much high off the pitch and get caught on the wrong side of vinicius . secondly compared to other games man city played a little deeper than usual in this game . they let real madrid come on to them than they going to go and press them .
the game started at the very good pace . i had already said that de bruyne is a special player and his qualities were evident in the first 25 min as he was involved in everything from creating to finishing . for the first goal if you had looked very carefully then vinicius was partly responsible for the goal as well as mendy . now mahrez will always try to cut on his strong foot and modric who was on that side should had closed him down .but mahrez run may not had come to frutition had de bruyne not made the run.if you had seen earlier matches then none of the man city players would make those kind of runs in the box . the second goal was nothing but a good pass by de bruyne but stupid defending by militao who under estimated his opponent and tried to get the better of him and paid the price . man city could had scored the third when de bruyne thread real madrid defense on the counter attack and foden failed to score . i think man citys missed chances may just come back to haunt them .
real were playing on the counter attack . in this match real used two fast paced counter attacking players compared to one since ancelotti knew that man city may try to contain vinicius and it was evident in the first half as silva would come up to double up on vinicius with stones . real scored the first goal from a mendy cross . now if you had seen then man city many a wrong things on the defense . first kroos passed the ball to rodrigo . now i had written about zinchenko as to how his mistake led to the goal . first off it was more than 40 yard pass and if zinchenko wanted then he could have gone on and compete for the ball . secondly when the ball reached mendy at that time benzema had shown hand and zinchenko should had realized his mistake .he had time to correct his position and should had been goal side and guard benzema and make it difficult for him to score.
in the first half stones went off and fernandiniho came off in his place . compared to stones his approach was different . he was getting tight on him while stones let him come on him and wait for the right moment to dislodge him off the ball . the third goal came off for man city because fernandiniho nicked ball off vinicius and foden made the run in the box ( different than man city's character to score). but on the very next move fernandiniho was fooled by vinicius and his defenders didnt cover for him which led to the goal. in the second half man city tried to slow down the game but then deep in the game you cannot press as efficiently as you can do in the first half . most importantly man city has to build around de bruyne . in the second half his influence on the game was very small compared to what he did in the first half .
real madrid will have to very good in the second leg . the reason i am saying is this . real madrid are mostly dependent on benzema and vinicius for their counter attacks and but for them to be successful they like the opposition to come on them and press them . for me ancelotti has put players in their positions and told them on how to operate but they dont have the cohesion as to how they will open the defense and this was evident in the second half . benzema has the habit that he takes over the offense from either vinicius and rodrigo but they dont have that proper cohesion as to what they need to do and how they will open up that defense . apart from those two good goals against chelsea which were perfect headers which would had made ronaldo jelaous they didnt made the goalkeeper work that hard . even in this game they seem to be in each others way and they need to work as to how they are going to make runs and how they will take positions and how they make penetration in the opponents box when the defense is has taken positions .ancelotti and his players need to take some drills to make this intersting affair and for man city they just need to play proper football which they did in the first half . i think gaurdiola will bring walker in the second leg against vinicius and use cancello as the left back .
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