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Real Madrid's stars needed to show a collective effort to beat Manchester City – and they did


“Este es el camino,” Carlo Ancelotti said afterwards. This is the way. For much of this season the Real Madrid coach has sounded like a broken record, telling his players to dig deeper and sacrifice themselves in pursuit of glory. On a bitterly cold night in Manchester, they found the way.

Not much that happens in this competition surprises Ancelotti, a European champion twice as a player and five times as a coach, but the manner of their 3-2 victory over Manchester City felt like a revelation to the Madrid coach.

The euphoria that greeted Jude Bellingham’s stoppage-time winner — Kylian Mbappe, who had just been substituted, leaping off the bench to charge onto the pitch and join the celebrations — was of a scale that might usually attract caution from Ancelotti, but on this occasion he joined his players in lauding the performance and the result it merited.

“I didn’t think at this time this team would be able to make such a sacrifice as they did tonight,” he said in his post-match news conference. “Today it has been shown that you can have balance with this team. You can, with sacrifice. Today everyone sacrificed.”

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Ancelotti hugs Mbappe after the forward’s efforts in the game (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

There is a danger of going overboard when two late goals, the second scored by substitute Jude Bellingham in stoppage time, turn a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 victory. There is certainly a danger in reading too much into a win over City when, as their coach Pep Guardiola freely admits, the Premier League champions are still so unsure of themselves after a traumatic few months.

But Ancelotti felt his team had laid down a marker after a rough patch of their own. As recently as last week, after a 1-0 defeat at Espanyol, he spelled out to his players at their training ground that they had to work harder out of possession. Before the 1-1 draw with Atletico Madrid on Saturday, he told reporters that the team’s success this season will rely on “collective effort”, adding, “That includes the four up front.”

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Mbappe and Vinicius Jr both worked hard against City (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

That has been the big question about this Madrid team from the moment they added Mbappe to a stable that already included Bellingham, Rodrygo and Vinicius Jnr. It has worked well enough to take them to the top of La Liga, but too often against top-level opponents — most notably in emphatic defeats by Barcelona in La Liga (4-0) and the Supercopa de Espana (5-2), and by Liverpool in the Champions League (2-0) — a lack of structure and rigour out of possession has been a concern.

It might be generous to describe City as top-level opponents right now, but they had the quality to make life difficult for Madrid last night. Despite being second-best for long periods, despite the dramatic denouement, they did not look like pushovers, with Guardiola fielding a highly experienced line-up. 

What impressed Ancelotti was the way his players stuck to their task, individually and collectively.

These things are relative. We are not talking about a team playing like Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid or Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool at the peak of their powers.

There was a moment late in the first half, with his team trailing to Erling Haaland’s 19th-minute goal, when the Madrid coach vented his displeasure at Mbappe for failing to press the opposition. At another point he appeared frustrated by Vinicius. But for the most part he was delighted with his players’ application.

When it comes to that word “sacrifice”, Rodrygo merits a mention, performing diligently in a right-wing role that required more defensive work than he might have wished. Likewise Bellingham, who has had to rein some of his attacking instincts this season in order to accommodate Mbappe further forward.

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Ancelotti highlighted the contributions of those in his back four, which, in the absence of the injured Dani Carvajal, Antonio Rudiger, Eder Militao and David Alaba, included two midfielders —Federico Valverde at right-back and Aurelien Tchouameni at centre-back — and a 21-year-old — Raul Asencio — who had only started two Champions League game previously. He was right to single out the “spectacular” performance of “the much-criticised Tchouameni” in an unfamiliar role.

Aurelien Tchouameni dashboard Man City

Even so, it felt like a game where two makeshift defences were vulnerable. High-scoring games have been a feature when these teams have clashed in the Champions League knock-out stage — a 4-3 and a 4-0 (both for City) and a 3-3 among their previous six meetings — and, with both defences depleted, attacks always threatened to be on top here.

Guardiola said afterwards that it was the best Madrid had played against his City team. Again the City caveat that exists right now makes it difficult to gauge the performance, but Madrid had 20 attempts on goal, which is more than any visiting team at the Etihad Stadium since Guardiola arrived in 2016. They had created and missed a number of presentable chances long before Mbappe equalised on the hour, following the flight of a Dani Ceballos pass and then making an awkward connection with his shin that took the ball beyond Ederson.

Ceballos, starting a Champions League game for only the seventh time, acquitted himself well in midfield but blotted his copybook with a crass challenge on Phil Foden that earned City a penalty with ten minutes remaining. Haaland beat Thibaut Courtois for the second time in the game and at that point it briefly looked as if the European champions would have to come from behind in the second leg at the Bernabeu next Wednesday.

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Bellingham gives Madrid a lead to defend next Wednesday (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

But the waves of Madrid attacks kept coming and, with City running out of legs in midfield and increasingly stretched at the back, Ancelotti’s team were never out of it. Bellingham and Vinicius Jnr were both prominently involved in the second equaliser, scored by Brahim Diaz within two minutes of coming off the bench against the club where he spent his late teens.

Bellingham, Vinicius et al could smell blood — and panic. Again City were a mess, but a loose pass from Mateo Kovacic would have been an irrelevance had Vinicius Jnr not been so alert and decisive in beating Rico Lewis to the ball. From there, the Brazilian showed the awareness to pick out Bellingham, who raced through to prod it over the line from close range.

The celebrations that followed told you this was a big moment for a young Madrid team. Most of them have already won the Champions League — not Mbappe yet — but since last season’s success at Wembley they have lost the experience of Toni Kroos (retired), Nacho (now playing in Saudi Arabia) while Carvajal, Rudiger, Eder Militao and Alaba are all injured and Luka Modric, now 39, was restricted to a late cameo here.

It is a different kind of team to the vastly experienced squad that won four Champions League title four times in the mid-2010s, but, as well as the enduring presence of Modric and (though he will miss the rest of the season through injury) Carvajal, there is a similarity in the demand for an all-star forward line to work hard out of possession without diluting their impact with the ball.

Then, as now, it felt as if Madrid might come unstuck if they were to come up against a hungrier, more energetic, more clearly structured team in the later stages of the tournament. But even if at times the balancing act between perspiration and inspiration, they almost always found a way — as they did again on this occasion, making them strong favourites to progress to the last 16.

“We proved that things are possible if we make sacrifices,” Ancelotti said. “When everyone shows a good level of sacrifice, the level of the team is there for all to see. This is the way to go.”

(Header photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)



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