It was a moment of cool, utterly imperturbable intuition which sealed the night and demonstrated that Manchester City are now armed with something for Europe which they did not have before.
By the time the unremitting rain had cleared and they had placed a foot in the semi-finals, Erling Haaland had despatched a ball into the net from close quarters – but it was his provision of the decisive second goal, for Bernardo Silva, which really took your breath way.
Without so much as a glance across the box into his peripheral vision, he lifted the ball for the goal-scorer to accelerate into. A ‘freight train’ Haaland might be, to quote one of last night’s more memorable descriptions, but the pictures he paints and the passes he provides are subtle and quite beautiful. No. City did not have this before.
The stadium did not seem to appreciate what this might mean for the team because the place certainly wasn’t bouncing.
The small, excitable German contingent brought all the noise and an element of introspection was understandable for City – a club insisting, perhaps a little too much, that it is about the journey as much as the destination in this tournament. A sixth successive year last eight and still no sign of the ultimate endgame.
Erling Haaland put in a stellar performance against Bayern Munich on Tuesday night
He scored one goal, assisted another for Bernardo Silva and created the space for Rodri’s opener
The highlight was a brilliant intuitive pass to set up his Portuguese teammate
‘Manchester City never left,’ Ruben Dias said in the match programme. ‘We’ve always been on our run and we’ve been getting closer and closer. All that has happened in the past is not something we let be a negative.’
The legend, first written out the man who also brought Manchester its Afflecks Palace is that ‘on the sixth day God created Manchester City’ and the general idea is that in the sixth year there will be a Champions League trophy.
Football doesn’t work that way, of course. There will be a ‘stone in the wheel’ – to quote Thomas Tuchel’s description of what his Chelsea team wanted to be when they faced and beat City in the 2021 final.
Even when the team is finely tuned as this – Bernardo Silva beating Alphonso Davies on the outside and turning back to beat him a second time; the inspired Jack Grealish making Benjamin Pavard look average – there is always the unexpected to mangle the plan in the more finely balanced games.
Rodri’s opener was a brilliant strike, but Haaland’s intelligence allowed it to happen
The 22-year-old dragged world-class defender Dayot Upamecano out of position
And that’s where Haaland comes in. ‘He came here to help us try to win the Champions League,’ Guardiola said before this game, quickly adding the rider, ‘and the other competitions.’
And if City do progress beyond this tie to an occasion when the pips really start to squeak, he will bring the new dimension. His brooding presence can exorcise the ghosts which have accumulated over the years for City in this competition.
Rodri was, of course, the one who will take the acclaim today for his first ever Champions League goal, though it was Haaland, on the margins of the danger as the Spaniard arced his shot, who was significant. It was he who scrambled the radar of Bayern’s Dayot Upamecano and gave his team-mate clear sight on goal. Haaland was loitering in the general vicinity, waiting to drop on whatever might present itself and Upamecano was dragged irresistibly towards him.
We are talking about one of the world’s outstanding defenders – an outstanding presence in the World Cup final whose sliding block for France in extra time to deny Argentina’s Lautaro Martinez was one of that tournament’s outstanding defensive interventions.
Yet Haaland had precisely the same effect on Upamecano when Ilkay Gundogan’s shot drew a save of the highest order from Jann Sommer, who extended his foot to block. Upamecano’s distraction led him to follow Haaland’s diagonal run and mistime his jump to meet Bernardo Silva’s cross.
Haaland has given City something they didn’t have before and helped them put one foot in the Champions League semi finals
Jack Grealish has been in excellent form in recent weeks and appears to be feeding off his Norwegian teammate
It helped on this occasion that the opposition were terribly poor and a pale imitation of the Bayern sides of old. This is a contest which has brought damage to City down their Champions League years, with Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery operated to devastating effect.
An animated Tuchel jumped up and down dramatically, faintly reminiscent of a kangaroo, as Guardiola, the best dressed individual in the house again, calmly supervised his own operations in a trench coat. But Serge Gnabry offered none of the expected threat. Leroy Sane brought only fleeting danger.
The German team’s diminishment reflects a broader point about this tournament, which no one at City would dare utter: that Guardiola’s side have not known a more promising landscape than this one. Real Madrid are way adrift in La Liga. Chelsea present the only English challenge. It is Napoli who pose the greatest threat.
Grealish is the one who seems most buoyed by Haaland. His backheel which sent the striker down the left to cross for Silva was his second of the night and evidence that he is working on a different level from that desperate occasion in Madrid which did for City, a year ago.
Haaland seized that opportunity and after the cross for Silva came his own contribution to the scoresheet. His anticipation of John Stones’ header put him in a different dimension to the defender. It was a regulation finish.
‘It’s learning after learning, mixed with our ambition again,’ Dias said of City’s European effort in that match programme interview. ‘We will try our best again.’ As Haaland leads, the rest seem to be following.
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