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Manchester City’s lions stay on course for treble after mauling Real Madrid’s antelopes

Despite their transgressions, they’re easy on the eye and were far too good for team of the century

Manchester City's Catalan manager Pep Guardiola celebrates his team's fourth goal against Real Madrid. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images
Manchester City's Catalan manager Pep Guardiola celebrates his team's fourth goal against Real Madrid. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images
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Mary Hannigan
Wed May 17 2023 - 22:22

Hands up, who was salivating at the prospect of this one? All of you? Hands up, who wanted both teams to lose? That many?! Hands up, who’s already bought an Inter Milan shirt for the final? Cripes. But look, you had to park your animus on a night like this and just prepare to drool.

Not least when the team news came in. A Who’s Who of international football. And that was just the benches. Manchester City and Real Madrid’s chosen XIs? Ah stop.

“Is this the real final,” Tommy Martin asked Brian Kerr and Richard Dunne, thereby ensuring he’d never be welcomed in the black and blue half of Milan.

“Well, they won’t be giving out the medals tonight,” Brian cautioned, so that was a, hold yer horses.

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When they reviewed the first leg of the semi-final they pointed to Carlo Ancelotti out-tweaking Pep Guardiola with his second half repurposing of Eduardo Camavinga, Brian saluting the French man’s “shuffly feet”.

In the second leg, who’d win the tweaking wars? This, after all, as Tommy reminded us, was a contest between “two of the great modern managers”.

Ahead of the game, though, poor Pep had to endure yet another round of questioning over his failure to win the Champions League thus far with City, provoking him in to declaring that “my legacy is already exceptional”.

Self-praise is, of course, no praise, but, in fairness to the lad, he wasn’t wrong. But hardly had he got that off his chest he was reminded, again, that he had never won the Champions League without Lionel Messi.

“And PSG haven’t won one with him,” he could have replied, but, stoically, he resisted.

[ Manchester City hammer Real Madrid to book place in Champions League final ]

Carlo, of course, has done it all, having managed a heap of big European clubs, as well as Everton, winning four Champions Leagues as coach along the way. “And even Carlo couldn’t get Everton to win anything,” said Brian, the Italian a tremendous gaffer, but not a miracle-worker.

Prediction time. Richard very firmly tipped City. “I think it will be the beginning of an era when they will dominate European football, I think it’s their time,” he said. You’d almost suspect he played for them once.

Brian? “City to win ... but.”

So, match time. As Brian said, quoting a Spanish paper: “The team of the season against the team of the century.”

And the team of the season were all over the team of the century like a rash in those opening stages, although it took them a whole 23 minutes before Bernardo Silva converted their supremacy in to an actual goal.

Steve McManaman slightly lost the run of himself, predicting a cricket score. “If Madrid don’t liven up, it’s going to be goal after goal AFTER GOOOOOAL!”

Manchester City are just three wins away from matching rivals Manchester United's feat in 1999 by claiming a Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League treble.

May we interrupt Steve here to talk briefly about John Stones? He now plays football like he was created in a lab using the DNA of Franz Beckenbauer and Paolo Maldini. That might be a small exaggeration, but he’s become really rather good. Having once resembled a poor man’s Harry Maguire, he’s now strutting around midfield like a peacock, like a touch of Socrates’ DNA was added to the mix.

(It was a nano second after this observation that he attempted to pass to Silva and found the corner flag).

Speaking of Silva. 2-0. City resembling the team of the century, Madrid looking a bit like, well, Leicester.

“It’s been like one of those nature documentaries where the lion is mauling the antelope,” said Tommy come half-time, Madrid devoured, City with 72 per cent of the possession and having 13 attempts on goal to Madrid’s one.

But Real Madrid, to state the somewhat obvious, are Real Madrid, and you’d half a notion that Carlo would engage in some masterful tweaking at the break, maybe activating Camavinga’s shuffly feet.

We waited. And waited. And waited, and ... nothing doing. Like an antelope meeting a lion, it was a case of, oh, go on then, eat me.

Thibaut Courtois performed miracles, mind, but there wasn’t a whole bunch he could do when his fellow Madrid employee Éder Militão got a tidy nick on Manuel Akanji’s header to send the ball netwards. 3-0. And City had hardly broken in to a sweat.

And then Julian Alvarez entered the fray and, holy God, made it four. Not quite a cricket score, but Madrid were well and truly stumped.

So, one more win in the Premier League, one more in the FA Cup, and one more in the Champions League, and that’s that, a City treble done and dusted. That sobbing you’re hearing is coming from their not-very-noisy-this-weather neighbours.

Granted, they’ve been charged with breaking financial fair play rules in or around 100 times, so there’s that. Naughty. So they could yet find themselves tussling with, say, Preston North End and Millwall for a place in the Championship promotion play-offs soon enough, Erling Haaland’s face saying something along the lines of, huh?

But Lordy, despite their transgressions, they’re easy on the eye.

Come June 10th in Istanbul, Pep’s legacy might just be a touch more exceptional.

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