Fee-fi-Fo-den: Smell the blood of an Englishman
Manchester City ended their run of failure in the Champions League football quarter-finals yesterday, beating Borussia Dortmund 2-1 for a 4-2 aggregate win.
Jude Bellingham scored to put Dortmund on course for an upset win before City hit back through a penalty by Riyad Mahrez and Phil Foden’s goal.
Guardiola reached the semifinals with City at the fifth attempt, matching the club’s best result under his predecessor Manuel Pellegrini in 2016. City go on to face Paris SaintGermain.
“For the club it’s so important, we cannot deny,” Guardiola said. “Of course we want more.” He praised PSG for knocking out “the best team in the world” — Bayern Munich — in the quarter-finals, “so we will see what will happen”.
Guardiola said he expected to be labelled “a failure” if Dortmund became the fourth club in a row to eliminate City in a Champions League quarter-final, after Lyon last year and before that Tottenham and Liverpool. Monaco beat City in the round of 16 in 2017 in Guardiola’s first season.
Bellingham, Dortmund’s 17-yearold English midfielder, put the German club ahead when he scored in the 15th minute after City defender Ruben Dias blocked Mahmoud Dahoud’s shot. That levelled the aggregate score 2-2, with Dortmund ahead on away goals.
City then laid siege to the Dortmund goal, with Kevin De Bruyne hitting the crossbar. And Dortmund handed City the breakthrough early in the second half when Emre Can gave away a penalty by heading a cross onto his arm.
Mahrez put City back in control when he blasted the 55th-minute spot kick into the top right corner.
Dortmund were unhappy with the penalty call against Can, a week after Bellingham had a goal ruled out in the first leg in disputed circumstances. “If you head on to your own arm, it’s not seen as a breach of the rules,” coach Edin Terzic said. “We haven’t had much luck with referee decisions in the last week.”
Chasing another goal to force extra time, Dortmund pushed up, and City took advantage of the space which opened.
Foden, who also scored in the first leg last week, made sure of the win in the 75th with a low shot from the edge of the box off a short corner routine.
The loss means Dortmund could face an exodus of talented young players at the end of the season. Part of the appeal to talents like striker Erling Haaland and forward Jadon Sancho — the latter injured for this game — has been Dortmund’s consistent Champions League appearances as a way to develop their skills and show off to potential buyers. With Dortmund sitting fifth in the Bundesliga, they’re on course for the far less appealing Europa League.
Real Madrid have also advanced into the semifinals, with Zinedine Zidane showing manager Jurgen Klopp how to turn a season around.
A 0-0 draw at Anfield protected a 3-1 advantage from the first leg for Madrid. The record 13-time European champions are back in the semifinals — where Chelsea await — for the first time since 2018 when Zidane lifted the European Cup for a third consecutive season by beating Klopp’s Liverpool in the final.
Their season looked to be unravelling just a few months ago. Trailing Atletico Madrid by 10 points in La Liga in January, the defending champions are now just a point behind and the double is on.
“We have to be really happy with what we’re doing,” Zidane said. “It has been a complicated season.”
For Liverpool, it’s turning into a miserable season — which is now sure to end without a trophy. It’s quite a comedown for Klopp’s side, who won the Champions League in 2019 — after losing the 2018 final to Madrid — and ended a 30-year English championship drought by winning the Premier League by an 18-point margin in 2020.
Now Liverpool are struggling to make the Champions League places, sitting three points outside the top four with seven games to go.