If Cristiano Ronaldo was feeling rather sad before this astonishing Champions League encounter, he certainly managed to make a few other people miserable here at the Santiago Bernabeu.
His victims, on this occasion, were Manchester City, a team who had battled to within touching distance of a precious point only to succumb to the genius of the Portuguese predator with little more than 60 seconds of this contest remaining.
Jose Mourinho was so ecstatic he slid across the grass on his expensively tailored knees while Joe Hart and his colleagues sank to theirs, utterly crushed by the insane brutality of football at this level.
Ronaldo’s winning goal marked the conclusion of a mind-blowing 21 minutes that produced five goals and the full spectrum of emotions for the 90,000 spectators inside this wonderful arena.
But what made it all the more painful for the English champions was the fact that those 21 minutes had suggested they were starting to get the hang of European football.
For the first half they continued to look like novices. A Ferrari? Unless they have started putting their famous prancing horse on buses, Mancini would have struggled to argue that he was at the wheel of such a vehicle during a torturous first 45 minutes for his team.
Mourinho certainly would have accused them of parking something more substantial in front of Hart’s goal, and the statistics published by UEFA told their own story. Real had enjoyed 74 per cent of the ball, unleashing 16 attempts on goal with only one in reply from the visitors.
That the score remained level at the interval was some achievement, but it was one that owed much to the brilliance and bravery of Joe Hart and some fine defensive football from Vincent Kompany and Matija Nastasic. In fact, until he was partly at fault for Real’s second goal, the Serb had enjoyed quite a debut for City.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footbal
.jpg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment