Manchester City won the Champions League by beating Inter in the final

Manchester City capped off a brilliant season with their first ever Champions League win. He got to the main club prize, having spent an insanely difficult final against Inter in Istanbul. In it, the Manchester team experienced several very unpleasant moments, including the loss in the first half of one of the leaders, Kevin de Bruyne, but still prevailed thanks to the only goal scored by Rodri.

The Istanbul final of the Champions League corrected, perhaps, the main oddity in the history of this tournament. Manchester City became a club with the resources to run for it back in 2008, when it was bought by the Abu Dhabi United Group. In a club whose class simply insists that victory is about to take place, he turned a few years later. And in recent years, having undergone a deep upgrade of coach Pep Guardiola, Manchester City has generally become a full-fledged standard club, the undisputed flagship of European football. But – still without the most valuable among the titles, because for some reason it did not grow together with him.

It grew together with him only at the end of a very luxurious season, in which, having strengthened its already impeccable line-up with phenomenal sniper Erling Haaland, Manchester City took both main domestic titles – the winner of the English Championship and the National Cup – and in which in the European Cup number one destroyed, superior by head, on the way to his decisive match between Bayern and Real, although in the most decisive match he faced such difficulties that it was easy to doubt the inevitability of the triumph of logic and justice.

Everyone who cared about the fate of Manchester City that evening, everyone who wanted him to get what he deserved for a long time, probably very quickly felt an unpleasant chill inside. It was terribly like something that was happening in Istanbul, literally similar to the details.

In 2021, Manchester United met at Chelsea Port in their previous final. The Londoners, who had tumbled that season, seemed to many easy prey for the powerful, stable Manchester City. But the match turned out to be a formal outsider’s win.

And so history repeated itself, and Portuguese nightmares migrated to the Istanbul stadium. The opponent again turned out to be far from the one whom the imagination painted. That is, of course, no one thought that Inter, an unexpected upstart, would enter the field solely in order to create a suitable backdrop for the inevitable Manchester triumph. But still, this level of resistance surprised, made me remember not about the problems of the Milanese, but about the best examples of Italian football that the world has ever seen and which aroused both admiration and hatred from it due to unceremonious pragmatism.

Inter were amazingly tight and amazingly flexible in the sense that, having lost the ball, they immediately adjusted perfectly to Manchester City’s attack, blocking all dangerous players and all threatening zones.

And inside his penalty area and near it, the density increased so much that, it seems, even a step forward in these conditions was already akin to a feat. And at the same time, when the ball went to Inter, he absolutely did not look like a team that does not particularly understand what to do in such a situation, because it was preparing, first of all, to fight back. He knew everything very well – and, for example, Federico Dimarco’s sharp flank breakthroughs convincingly proved this.

Those who, before this final, believed in the indisputability of the “paper” alignment, the baggage accumulated by the finalists throughout the season, assumed that they would mainly enjoy the Manchester attack, its sharpness and sophistication. And for the entire first half, from the refined and sharp, they saw only a good slalom in the corner of the penalty area for Bernardo Silva, which resulted in an inaccurate blow, and also an attack by Erling Haaland. He found himself near the corner of the goal, but like a frog, in the manner of a hockey goalkeeper, crouching goalkeeper Andre Onana dealt with him outwardly without much tension.

It was the first episode in the match that brought the phenomenal scorer to the fore. And it was Manchester’s first hit on target in the final. And after all, more than half an hour of play is left behind.

Shortly after this failure of Holanna, Kevin de Bruyne suddenly sank onto the lawn. He sank and could not get up for a long time. And when he got up, his face showed perfectly how he was afraid that the pain would return. She returned just a couple of minutes later, and de Bruyne wandered to the bench, making way for Phil Foden. Two years ago in Porto, Kevin de Bruyne, the engine of Manchester City, also did not finish the final due to an injury. Then, however, he left at the beginning of the second half, but what’s the difference?

And after the break, the Manchester team were on the verge of trouble because of their own stupidity. Manuel Akanji calmly missed the back pass at the touchline, apparently thinking that goalkeeper Ederson would now also calmly pick it up. And Ederson, as it turned out, was not going to come forward – and the ball went to Lautaro Martinez. If it were not for the noise of the stands, the wild cry of Romelu Lukaku, who had just replaced Inter, would probably have been inscribed in a separate line in the annals of the Champions League. He stood alone in the center of the penalty area in front of an empty net and shouted to Lautaro Martinez, who feinted in front of Ederson, so that he would finally notice him. Martinez did not notice, he decided to deal with Ederson himself – and failed.

And suddenly, having survived such a nervous episode, Manchester City, about which one already wanted to think that fate, the curse of the Champions League with him forever, came to life. Moved, began to find free zones. The transformation was truly radical. As well as its consequences.

Manuel Akanji, who almost turned into an anti-hero of the match, looked around the Italian half, gave a cool vertical pass to Bernard Silva, who threw the ball back. Rodri, who knows how to connect well, ran into him and fired without options for Onana.

And the luck that always left Manchester City in the Champions League at key moments suddenly smiled wide, wide at him. Inter had to equalize when Federico Dimarco, in a box packed to the limit, managed to outwit Ederson by launching the thinnest “parachute” with his head. The ball hit the crossbar and bounced off the same Dimarco. He hit his head again, for sure, and, apparently, did not believe it when he realized that on the trajectory of the blow, an insurmountable barrier from nowhere arose the powerful body of Lukaku’s partner.

Andre Onana kept the intrigue in the final when he held out against Phil Foden, who went one-on-one with him. And Inter, thanks to him for saving, went ahead in the end. But the terrible Portuguese ghosts have already disappeared into the black sky of Istanbul. And Ederson, in a hopeless, in fact, position, guessed where to set up in order to repel the blow of the unlucky Lukaku from the goalkeeper’s line. Logic and justice prevailed over football’s love for all sorts of anomalies, from which the Manchester United players, who started dancing insanely a moment after the final whistle, apparently suffered more than anyone else.

Alexey Dospekhov