Manchester City’s inexorable hard power crushes Real Madrid

I t was at around 70 minutes, shortly after Toni Kroos had followed Luka Modric off the pitch, that the edges of the night began to sharpen a little and this Champions League semi-final took on a perfect clarity. Manchester City were going to win and Real Madrid were going to lose and no tweak or tactic, no switch or substitution, was going to change that fact.

Real seemed to realise it too. Perhaps they were only 2-0 down but they were also bruised and broken, scarred and scared, tired of running into dead ends filled with blue shirts. Vinícius Junior had long since stopped trying to beat Kyle Walker and had instead resorted to dribbling past as many players as possible, like kids do in the playground. The fouls became more deliberate and more desperate. Even the Spanish radio commentators at the back of the press box had given up shouting and exhorting in favour of low, funereal voices and the odd illegible hand gesture.

On the biggest stage, in their favourite competition, the most dominant club in Champions League history had been placed under intolerable levels of stress, and simply detonated.

It finished four-nil, and perhaps that flattered Madrid a little. Ultimately only the flailing fingertips of Thibaut Courtois prevented this from becoming a total humiliation, the sort of scoreline that eventually earns a game its own Wikipedia page. It was probably City’s greatest performance under Pep Guardiola, a kind of footballing perfection, a museum piece, not merely a lesson but a scolding, sport as scorched earth strategy. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains.

What does remain? Certainly very little of this great Madrid side. Everyone knew this was a team in need of a transitional phase,