THERE is a limited amount of time you can stretch out suspense. Take it too far and it dissipates.
Remember Davina McCall back in the day? “The next person to leave the Big Brother house is…” That’s what she’d say as a nation held its breath only to then pause for an eternity and in that extended silence foreign governments would topple and you’d watch your kids grow up before your very eyes. You would zone out and forget who was facing eviction or even what programme you were viewing.
Which brings us to this Friday’s Champions League last 16 clash between Manchester City and Real Madrid, a game that feels so detached from its exhilarating first leg at the Bernabeu they may as well be distant cousins barely on speaking terms. There are 163 days separating the ties and it’s not just time that has sucked a lot of the intrigue from the fixture but in that vacuum so very much has happened to change its dynamic.
#ManCity played their first ever game in the tier of English football against Blackpool #OnThisDay in 1998 – and this Friday they’ll take a 2-1 advantage into a #UCL second leg against Real Madrid.#MCFC | @ManCity pic.twitter.com/Gf3jUyeMpw
— Man City Report (@cityreport_) August 4, 2020
First and foremost of course is the reason for the hiatus, a global pandemic which means that while City’s highly impressive 2-1 win in March was played out in front of 75,000 fanatical Madridistas this corresponding game will be punctuated by the occasional shout of ‘man on’.
Back in the spring the Blues were still reeling from a two-year European ban and the narrative had it that this was realistically their last chance to attain the ultimate prize during Guardiola’s era. Now there is an altogether different form of motivation due to CAS’s recent decision to overturn the punishment because how sweet it would be to rub UEFA’s nose in it by raising their golden goose.
Not that motivation has much of a role to play here if truth be told. A team can go extremely far in domestic competitions fired up by purpose but in Champions League football it is quality that usually wins out and in this instance City’s cause restarts against a club that has won the tournament four times in the past six years.
"If there's any team capable of overcoming this deficit in the second leg its Real Madrid." So said a defiant Casemiro in defeat.
Spanish optimism is further buoyed by a revitalisation that has occurred since football’s resumption that has seen Zinedine Zidane’s men string together ten wins and a draw to take the La Liga crown. Back in March such a romp looked unlikely with defeats to Levante and Real Betis coming either side of their City loss and if their upturn in results is significant what also matters is that five of those victories were secured by a single goal margin. That suggests fortitude and unity has returned to the Madrid camp with the players rebuying back into Zidane’s ethos.
They benefit too this time by not being weakened by the absence of Eden Hazard whose threat running at an exposed City back-line is a concern while in Karim Benzema they have a striker who has rediscovered his goal-scoring touch. Prior to the coronavirus crisis the French star couldn’t hit a cow’s culo with a bandurria but in his 11 games post-lockdown he has averaged a goal every 133 minutes.
Not that Los Blancos have a monopoly on finding themselves in better shape now than then. Relieved of the insecurities that accompanied a futile title fight City returned to action looking far more like the side that gained cool nicknames between 2017 and 2019 and this is reflected in the goal columns.
In the ten league games leading up to football being placed in temporary storage City scored 18 goals and conceded 11. In their ten games since they have found the net 34 times and only been breached on four occasions. This is a relaxed group enjoying their mojo again.
It is additionally a group that cannot and will not have any excuses should the visitors prevail. Not having Sergio Aguero to call on certainly stings but Sergio Ramos’ suspension tots that up as a score draw and elsewhere City could not hope to be better prepared. From June on no other top flight manager has made more changes per game than Guardiola and it’s hard to shake the feeling he’s had one eye on this fixture from the get-go. Since their FA Cup semi-final defeat to Arsenal he has allocated a full fortnight just to work on shape and intention.
Borussia Dortmund, Valencia, Liverpool and Spurs have already departed the tournament a step short of the quarter finals. The next club to leave the Champions League is….
We’ve had to wait five long months for the big reveal. Now it’s finally time to zone back in.
