Manchester City and Pep Guardiola’s side, are through to the last eight of the UEFA Champions League, after beating Real Madrid 2-1 at the Eithad on Friday night.
Manchester City after missing out on the domestic league, knew what they needed to do to go through to the last eight, and coming up against Real Madrid who are the masters of the Champions League, it was never going to be an easy ride for the Pep Guardiola’s side. But somehow, Raphael Varane made that task a much more easy one for the English Premier League club side, with two dreadful errors, which City capitalized on to see them through to last eight.
Both Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling scored from Varane’s errors to give Manchester City a well deserved win.
Real Madrid on the night, tried to play from the back, a move that saw Gabriel Jesus with his tenacity, pressured Raphael Varane into making a costly error, passing on the ball to Sterling who wasted no time to put the ball in the net.
Zinedine Zidane has never lost a tie in the knockout stage of the tournament as a manager. He has now.
It looked, at first, that it was going to be easy. Manchester City were very much on top from the start and, after a first defensive calamity sparked an early goal, looked to have found a team as random at the back as their own can be.
Madrid equalised and by half-time were hitting City’s weak spot with increasing regularity.
And once Madrid had drawn level it placed the game on a knife-edge for the next 40 minutes, with one more goal required to take the tie level on aggregate.
Rodri played a long ball forward which Varane attempted to head back to Courtois. It fell sloppily short and Jesus pounced, giving Manchester City the lead 2-1.
The game ended 2-1 in favour of Manchester City, who will now be facing Lyon in last eight of the Champions League.