Finally: Man City shake off Parisians to make big gig
They lost their nerve and started to kick us and it was good. They had the red card, and after, it was more comfortable for us.
Riyad Mahrez
By the time Riyad Mahrez completed the counter-attack that sealed Manchester City’s spot in a first Champions League football final, it looked so effortless overcoming a Paris Saint-Germain lineup that lost their cool and composure.
It was the Paris-born winger who netted twice before PSG had Angel Di Maria sent off. City won 2-0 to eliminate last season’s finalists 4-1 on aggregate yesterday.
“They lost their nerve and started to kick us and it was good,” Mahrez said. “They had the red card, and after, it was more comfortable for us.”
It has been anything but comfortable for City getting a shot at lifting European football’s top prize for the first time despite 13 years of lavish investment. Even reaching this semifinal required a fight in court to overturn a ban from this season’s Champions League for breaching UEFA’s financial rules.
And it’s only two weeks since the Abu Dhabi-owned team exposed themselves to fresh sanctions for joining a brief, ill-fated bid to split to help form a breakaway Super League.
Now City could win the competition they tried to leave in what could be an all-English final on May 30 in Istanbul if Chelsea overcome Real Madrid this morning.
Chelsea and Madrid played to a 1-1 draw in the first leg.
“Of course, we’ve invested money in the last decade since Sheikh Mansour took over the club, but it’s not just about this,” City manager Pep Guardiola said yesterday. “If you want to think it’s just about money, it’s okay. But there is a lot of incredible things behind the scenes.
“To reach the Champions League final is so difficult. It’s the toughest one, but we did it.”
City are now accustomed to success — sitting on the brink of their third Premier League title in four seasons after already collecting the League Cup last month. But their only continental title came with the nowdefunct European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1970.
“This club needed the final, these players needed the final,” City defender Kyle Walker said.
“For these players to not be in a Champions League final is a disappointment every year.”
PSG missed out on a second shot at lifting a first European Cup after losing last season’s final to Bayern Munich, and Mauricio Pochettino’s lineup are even struggling to defend the French title.
“Disappointed and very sad,” said Pochettino, who lost the 2019 Champions League final as Tottenham manager. “We played well but we didn’t have the luck that you need in football.”
And in the clash of European football’s Gulf-funded big-spenders, it was the Qatari visitors from Paris on the back foot quickly in Manchester.
After scoring City’s winner in Paris last week, Mahrez took only 11 minutes to score in the second leg. The move began with a long ball by defender Oleksandr Zinchenko running on to a long ball from goalkeeper Ederson.
Zinchenko passed to Kevin De Bruyne, whose shot was blocked by Keylor Navas but Mahrez was alert to the rebound to put the ball through the goalkeeper’s legs on a field covered in the remnants of a spring hailstorm.
The frustrations of PSG were clear. The visitors finished the game with 10 men just like in the first leg after Di Maria was sent off with 20 minutes to go for kicking at Fernandinho.
PSG turned on the referee, with midfielder Ander Herrera in a postmatch interview accusing Bjorn Kuipers of directing an expletive at PSG teammate Leandro Paredes. It wasn’t heard by Pochettino. “Maybe UEFA will investigate,” he said. “But that is not an excuse.”