Real Madrid defender Antonio Rudiger was by all accounts quite pleased with the way he handled Manchester City’s Erling Haaland at the Bernabeu on Tuesday evening.
Rudiger had discussed the battle beforehand and walked off the field convinced he had won the battle. He must have overlooked the fact that he was part of a defense that conceded three goals.
And this is about football. It’s a team game and Haaland is an integral part of Europe’s best game.
There is a good chance that City will knock Real out of the Champions League for the second consecutive season when the teams meet again in Manchester next week. While Rudiger sits on the bench in April telling his friends how good he is, Haaland will be one step further. of consecutive final appearances.
We are at the forefront. City are slight favorites for the draw, but nothing more.
Antonio Rudiger keeps Erling Haaland in charge on Tuesday evening in the Champions League match between Real Madrid and Manchester City
There was mutual respect between the pair as a thrilling match ended with six goals shared
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However, the point about Haaland still stands. He hasn’t scored many goals lately – just one in his last five City games – and what we know about the Norwegian is that when he’s not scoring he can be quite invisible.
Of course it’s strange how anonymous he can be. There’s no doubt about that. Only twenty touches against Madrid in a high-scoring match.
I was at a Champions League match that City dominated in Copenhagen in February when he touched the ball just eight times in the opening hour. It was hard not to notice.
But the truth is that City knew what they were getting when they signed Haaland from Borussia Dortmund two summers ago. They paid for goals.
More of them than we could have ever imagined when it happened. His tally currently stands at 82 from 86 City starts. You might want to read that line again.
If Pep Guardiola and City’s director of football Txiki Begiristain had wanted a number 9 who also liked to drop deep and create, they would have thrown the kitchen sink at Tottenham for Harry Kane.
If they wanted a striker who could run channels and scare defenses with pace, they could have tried Son Heung-min from the same club. Both would have been super players at City.
But having never found a real replacement for Sergio Aguero, City’s football brains decided they wanted goals and nothing else.
It was a scoreless evening for Haaland, but not for Manchester City, who scored three times
Roy Keane was scathing about Haaland’s clutch play, likening it to that of a League Two player
And these astonishing statistics – combined with last year’s treble success and an attack on a repeat that remains alive and well this time – seem to suggest they were pretty much right about that.
Roy Keane (a former central midfielder) recently described Haaland’s ineffectiveness in City’s 0-0 draw against Arsenal, describing the 23-year-old’s link-up play as being of League Two standard.
Funnily enough, this analysis is known to have upset Haaland’s father Alfie more than Erling himself. It seems the Keane/Haaland beef of yesteryear is still alive and kicking.
The interesting thing about all this was that Keane was wrong anyway.
It’s not that Haaland doesn’t mix the game very well. He doesn’t really do it all and that’s clearly at Guardiola’s behest.
Despite City’s squad being full of smart, creative players, much of what their great coach needs and demands is highly structured.
Guardiola does not play freeflow football like Jurgen Klopp does at Liverpool, for example. There is actually a lot more order to the way Guardiola teams play and Haaland’s role in the current model is very clear.
Play on the shoulder of the two central defenders and get ready to come alive when the ball is played in front of you.
We can say with confidence that this has worked quite well throughout the season and the three quarters Haaland has spent in England.
The sense of order that Pep Guardiola imposes on his City side means Haaland simply has to score
City would have broken the bank for Harry Kane if they wanted a number 10 who also scores goals
Haaland does not allow himself to be attacked and looks for the ball. He doesn’t see himself as a link in the creative chain and that’s understandable in an environment where the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden, Jack Grealish and others already fulfill that purpose.
Haaland does occupy defenders. He demands physical and mental attention even when he doesn’t have the ball.
The space this frees up for others is clear. His ability as a finisher is now unparalleled.
Would Liverpool have beaten Manchester United last weekend if Haaland had been in their team? That is undoubtedly true.
Haaland is unlikely to worry about Keane’s comment if he wins the Treble again
Centre-forwards are perhaps wrongly defined by numbers. They can occasionally mislead. But not Haaland’s.
His longest scoring drought for City stands at five games. The latest of these was the Champions League final against Inter in Istanbul last June.
He didn’t touch the ball much that night either and I’m not sure this weighed particularly heavily on his mind as he bowed his head to his medal.
When Kylian Mbappe scored a huge goal for PSG in Dortmund last December, the semi-automatic offside system used in the Champions League ruled it out without a minute.
In England our VAR officials were still fiddling with red lines and rulers.
Now the Premier League clubs have voted – belatedly – to join the real world and it is already too late. Goodbye A-level geometry, hello common sense.
Kylian Mbappé saw a goal for Paris Saint-Germain at Borussia Dortmund disallowed due to the semi-automatic offside system
Calls continue to grow for youngster Kobbie Mainoo to start England’s European Championship campaign against Serbia in June, but it appears Gareth Southgate has reservations.
Asked about the Manchester United player after his starring role in the England-Belgium draw last month, Southgate said: ‘He has the fearlessness to get in and the technical ability, when pressed, to find and manipulate a pass to manipulate the ball tightly. areas.
‘It gives us a profile of a player we don’t have yet. That is extremely exciting.
‘But we are of course a bit more open with him in the team.’
It’s that last sentence that tells me Mainoo won’t be playing in game one in Gelsenkirchen.
Kobbie Mainoo could be part of Gareth Southgate’s squad for Euro 2024, but start not guaranteed
It tells me that the England manager may listen to his more conservative instincts when it comes to preparing his team for a must-see opener.
That will fuel Southgate’s critics, and rightly so. There are times when courage can be a virtue.
However, it is also worth noting that Mainoo, for all his obvious potential and talent, is currently playing in a United midfield that is constantly overrun, outplayed and outmatched by Premier League teams.
As Gary Neville said after the draw against Liverpool, it is United’s three midfielders who represent the team’s biggest ongoing weakness.
Kobbie Mainoo celebrates his stunning goal for Manchester United against Liverpool
Mainoo cannot be solely blamed for this. Bruno Fernandes and Casemiro are also in it and they have much more experience than the teenager.
But Mainoo is part of that midfield and as such is part of a problem. Southgate must have noticed this too.
Just after Manchester United had equalized against Liverpool at Old Trafford, the visiting team launched one of those counter-attacks that so often seemed to open the opponents like a can of beans, but almost inevitably came to naught.
On this occasion the numerical overload ended with Darwin Nunez in possession at the far post.
The Liverpool striker could have shot. He could have given a two-yard pass back inside to the unmarked Dominik Szoboszlai. Instead, he hit the ball back across the goal, to absolutely no one.
Darwin Nunez fires the ball across goal to no one during his frustrating display at Old Trafford
On a chaotic afternoon it was a defining moment, one that would have halted United’s recovery.
But it didn’t happen because a young footballer who is so much talked about failed to simply lift his head and look.
Nunez is a player I would pay to watch. I’ve tipped him for great things before on this page and I stand by that. But my resolve is weakening.
If you haven’t mastered some of the basics of the game at 24, when will you?