Real Madrid made to suffer by City but Guardiola knows they are never done

W hen Eduardo Camavinga picked up the ball at the start of the move that shifted this game and shaped the tie, setting up what promises to be a superb second leg next week, 36 minutes had gone and Manchester City, the team who had won 16 games in a row, were already over 3o0 passes. They had 72% of possession and 100% of the shots, 6 to 0. Thibaut Courtois had intervened four times, the best save from Rodrigo Hernández, taking his Champions League count to 26 from the last 26 shots he has faced. And the Frenchman was still way, way back in his own half, boxed in by the area. But it didn’t matter.

A midfielder playing at full-back, suddenly the Frenchman was flying, the noise rose with every stride, as if they knew. It’s not that it was a chance, not really, only everything is a chance here, and as Camavinga reached the other end, from one area to the next, he found Vinícius Júnior 20 yards out. This wasn’t really a chance either, but the Brazilian’s shot screeched through the air into the net leaving him standing in the corner, hammering at his chest, that badge, this place going wild. Remember us?

This was another demonstration that Real Madrid do many things so well, and one of them is wait. Somewhere inside of this, the biggest club of all, is a humility to go with the superiority, a confidence that their chance will arrive but an acceptance that the other team plays too; that at times they may even play better. And that when they do, that is not a reason to collapse, still less to lie down and die, but to cling on, to survive until you can slip in the knife. For there will always be a moment and then you must take it.

Here, as so often, they did. The difference to last year was that so did City. By the end of this