"In football anything is possible, was Pep Guardiola's rallying cry and while Manchester City failed to pull off a Lazarus act for the ages, this was a definite one-off wonder of a contest that thrilled all witnesses. Particularly, the first 45 minutes of mayhem headlined by Vinicius Junior apparently being ruled offside by the referee, Clement Turpin, then onside, which meant Bernardo Silva was then penalised for handball, sent off, and the Brazilian then scored from the spot."
"To prosper City required a comeback as scintillating as the 2011-12 title-clinching win over QPR. To try to engineer this, Guardiola's linuep was less adventurous than last Wednesday's 3-0 losing XI, the directness of Savinho and Antoine Semenyo discarded for the guile of Rayan Cherki and Tijjani Reijnders."
"When Valverde spurned a gilded chance to score a fourth of the tie when through inside the opening 60 seconds the stabbed attempt dribbled into Gianluigi Donnarumma's gloves this ignited a chaotic period of action. After the letoff for City, they went close to pulling one back. Flooding Madrid's area, piledrivers from Cherki and Rodri were repelled by Thibaut Courtois."
Manchester City faced Real Madrid in a Champions League round of 16 second leg, needing to overturn a 3-0 first-leg deficit. The match was marked by controversial refereeing decisions, including Vinicius Junior being ruled offside then onside, followed by Bernardo Silva's red card for handball and Vinicius scoring from the penalty. Erling Haaland equalized, but late goals from Rayan Ait-Nouri, Fede Valverde, and another Vinicius strike were ruled offside or counted. Despite City's aggressive attacking play and numerous chances, they could not overcome the deficit. Real Madrid advanced to the quarter-finals while City was eliminated from the competition.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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