MANCHESTER, England — Very first thing Wednesday morning, Pep Guardiola’s employees will ship to the Manchester Metropolis supervisor a meticulously annotated report of his group’s Champions League semifinal in opposition to Actual Madrid. At roughly the identical time, Carlo Ancelotti, his counterpart within the Spanish capital, will obtain one thing very related.
These dossiers will comprise transient snatches of video, every highlighting some key tactical element. There might be photographs, too, providing a snapshot of a scarcely perceptible flaw in a participant’s positioning or an expanse of the sphere left uncovered or a darting run left unconsummated. There’ll, maybe, be large arrows in some lurid shade. There will definitely be reams of statistics.
Guardiola and Ancelotti will cool down and comb by means of them, panning for no matter seam of knowledge they could discover, mining deep into the element within the hope of discovering some kernel, some perception that may show the distinction once they play once more subsequent week. And as they do it, they may know, deep down, that it’s all completely, essentially, unavoidably pointless.
There isn’t a hidden rationalization, buried deep in a screed of numbers or encoded in excessive decision pixels, for a way Manchester Metropolis managed to beat Actual Madrid but ended the night feeling prefer it had misplaced. Or for the way it completed with 4 targets and the feeling that it ought to have had half a dozen extra, or the way it landed a succession of knockout blows solely to seek out its opponent nonetheless standing there, smiling, complaining solely of the mildest headache.
The uncooked numbers of the sport usually are not a magic eye puzzle; they’re barely even a Rorschach check. Irrespective of how lengthy and laborious you stare at them, they won’t all of a sudden turn into a picture, clear and sharp, of one thing that bears evaluation and interpretation.
They won’t inform Guardiola how his group may very well be so clearly, so vastly superior by each obtainable metric and in each conceivable means — slicker in possession and extra ingenious and artistic and youthful and dynamic — and but wholly incapable of shaking Madrid from its tail.
And they won’t enlighten Ancelotti as to how his group, one way or the other, stays alive and preventing on this semifinal, with an opportunity over 90 minutes in entrance of its personal followers, baying and roaring, to defy all human logic and make the Champions League ultimate. They’ll definitely not inform him how Actual Madrid manages to maintain doing this, time and again, seeming to attract power because it comes ever nearer to the sting, regularly discovering the desire and the wit to conjure its curious, self-perpetuating magic.
Guardiola himself had acknowledged that earlier than the sport, half in jest, suggesting that there was not an unlimited quantity of level in conducting the standard, instinctive evaluation of Actual Madrid as a result of Ancelotti’s group is, by its very nature, so chimerical. He meant it, most probably, as a mirrored image on the virtuosity of Karim Benzema and Luka Modric, the power of a few of the best gamers of their era to bend a recreation to their will, but it surely sounded just a bit like he was saying Actual Madrid doesn’t make sense.
He’s, after all, too respectful — even of Actual Madrid, the membership that stood as his archenemy for the primary 4 many years of his profession — to say that out loud, however his expertise on the Etihad wouldn’t have contradicted him.
Actual was crushed inside 10 minutes: two targets down, ruthlessly uncovered, trying all of a sudden just like the costly assortment of gifted however ill-matched people that every one right-thinking folks dismissed them as about 4 Champions League titles in the past. David Alaba, his complete profession spent among the many elite, appeared to have been changed by some callow ingénue. Toni Kroos appeared to age a number of many years with each passing minute.
After which, from nowhere, Ferland Mendy slung in a cross, the type that comes extra in hope than expectation, and Benzema planted his foot and shifted his weight and scored, though it was not instantly clear whether or not each the human physique and the legal guidelines of physics are designed to work like that.
Irrespective of. Metropolis was nonetheless slicing Madrid aside at will. Riyad Mahrez hit the publish. Phil Foden had one cleared off the road. A beat later, Foden transformed an suave, clipped cross to revive Metropolis’s cushion, to alleviate the strain swaddling the Etihad.
The ball had come from the foot of Fernandinho, a creaking central midfielder reborn for the night — in extenuating circumstances — as a marauding fullback. His rejuvenation lasted two minutes. Guardiola was nonetheless celebrating when Vinicius slipped previous his makeshift opponent, sprinted half the size of the sphere, and slipped the ball previous Éderson.
Metropolis got here once more, Bernardo Silva allotting with all nuance and intricacy and easily kicking the ball, as laborious as he might, his shot flashing previous Thibaut Courtois. Benzema turned away, grinning ruefully, as if he couldn’t fairly consider the holes from which he has to retrieve his teammates.
On anybody else, it might need appeared like an admission of defeat, a ultimate acquiescence to destiny. However it’s Actual Madrid, and it’s Benzema, and it’s the Champions League, so clearly what occurred was that Aymeric Laporte inadvertently — however inarguably — dealt with the ball in his personal penalty space, and Benzema stood up and chipped a shot, languidly and confidently, straight down the center of Éderson’s objective.
Guardiola sat on an icebox within the technical space, his fingers steepling in opposition to his brow, in horrified awe, as if attempting to impose some motive on all of it. It’s a thankless activity. This recreation didn’t make sense. Its final result, the one which meant Actual Madrid left Manchester with one thing extra concrete than hope, with 90 minutes in entrance of a baying, prepared Bernabeu between Ancelotti’s gamers and one other Champions League ultimate, didn’t make sense.
There isn’t a knowledge level, no vignette, no piece of study that can adequately clarify how Manchester Metropolis might beat Ancelotti’s group so comprehensively and but go away with the tie poised so delicately. Actual Madrid doesn’t make sense, not within the Champions League, and all you are able to do is permit your self to be washed away by it.
