There was noise
aplenty, smoke and mirrors and lots besides, but at the end of the day it was
curtains for the side built by the delicate hands of Roberto Mancini and turned
briefly into a fantasy goal-scoring machine by Manuel Pellegrini. (That was two
years and counting ago, mind you).
The first great City
side of the modern era is no more.
What a stage, what a
place to bring it all to an end. And what an end it was too. Below the hulking,
steep-sided cathedral of the Santiago Bernabeu, City’s big hitters finally ran
aground. One sole shot on goal in the 88th minute was the total
second half effort for a side trying to save its skin in its first ever
Champions League semi final. Fernandinho had earlier hit the outside of a first half post,
but it was meager gruel on feast night.
Asked to produce one
last earth tremor in a season of tumbling bricks, there was nothing left to
give. Drifting out of a tournament that had played witness to exhilarating away
performances in Monchengladbach, Seville, Kiev and Paris was deemed a stronger
idea than throwing caution to the wind and going for broke.
Asked to produce one
last ground-shaking performance before he left, the Elephant of Bondoukou ate
grass. His rampaging, dust-scattering charges are no more. The majestic old
beast rolled slowly but conclusively onto his side, issued a noise like the air
escaping from a small party balloon and passed away.
Like all great beasts
of the Savannah, his long and comfortable reign over all he surveyed, was
finishing in an undignified heap. His demise not to coincide with a triumphant
return to the Champions League final stage he bestrode in the colours of
Barcelona, but a beaten, exhausted husk, removed from the field in full view of
the world.
The curtain that came
down on City’s season of European improvement was besmirched and of frankly
dubious quality. Threadbare in the middle, see-through in parts, its fabric far
from the Italian silks Roberto had bestowed upon us, far even from the early hand-knitted
Andean rugs the kind Señor Pellegrini sneaked beneath our acheing feet to start
with. This was a mottled quilt with mould and one of Manuel’s half eaten enchiladas
underneath.
Still, the way to build
enthusiasm and optimism when they are in short supply is to arrive in the great
cities of Europe and set about abusing the hospitality. The shisha pipe of
life, hot, sweet and bubbly, soon puts you in a frame of mind best described as
chilled out. It was almost as if Yaya
had been blowing on the other end. If some were relaxed in the hostelries and
tabernas around Sol and Plaza Mayor, down the side streets of Tribunal and the
little bistros off Gran Via, our Ivorian powerhouse looked like he’d received a
tranquiliser dart to his left flank.
Madrid is a grand old city
that carries off the concept of “big” very comfortably. Everywhere you wander
there are monuments and convents and squares that are as big as a medium-sized
English town. Traipsing the sun-baked Passeo de la Castellana that cuts through
the centre of the city like one of the world’s major rivers of concrete, it at
no time reminds you even vaguely of a rain lashed Chester Road.
Taxis, resplendent in
their Rayo Vallecano home shirts, ply the thoroughfare like their lives depend
on it. Women with smoking brown eyes lounge on terraces and draw on cigarettes,
while rotund men with slicked back hair shuffle their pastle coloured pullovers
into a comfortable knot around their nonchalant latino shoulders. The size and
magnificence of Spanish vivacity, virility and vaingloriousness almost makes
one understand how Cristiano’s pouting and preening could be misconstrued as a
good old fashioned slice of Madrileño bravura, but of course he was like that
in Manchester too and he hails from a village on a rock in the Atlantic so
there’s no excuse really.
A feature that had been
evident by its absence on the last occasion City played in the Spanish capital
(hark at this, frequent fliers, we’re
here nearly every year now) was beginning to make its early presence felt:
organization. Police were relatively civil (they didn’t crack you on the head
with a truncheon for daring to drink beer in the open air at least) and a
steady flow of Blues were being supplied with their tickets from a well ordered
room in D wing of yet another of Madrid’s colossal office blocks. As I
staggered parched past the Plaza de Pablo Ruiz Picasso, an unedifying patch of
red brick and cement that did the great man’s memory no favours whatsoever, I
was aware that I had at last found something that reminded me properly of the
Arndale Centre. Unless of course the joyless patch of tarmac was some
kind of horrendous ironic statement that people like me are not supposed to
get.
In town, the usual
footballs were being punted around the dazzling bright Plaza Mayor, good
natured sun bathing and back slapping the order of the day. An odd man in his
40s dressed entirely in black did his best liquid Michael Jackson impersonations and
another pretended to be a deer covered in tinsel. Rewarded with a ten euro note Jackson then revolved in the sun checking its authenticity, as if scarcely credulous that someone could be drunk enough to reward him for his bandy-legged cavorting. It was developing into one
of those kinds of days. Two blocks west in the superbly ornate Mercado de San
Miguel, plates of oysters, olives stuffed with anchovies, freshly frittered calamares
and the omnipresent blocks of tortilla were being washed down with smooth as
silk Rioja.
With the sun dropping
over the skyline, the trek up the Paseo de la Castellana began. By now a
heaving mess of excited traffic, our Atletico supporting taxi driver wished us
well against his sworn enemy. As it turned out, our wine-fuelled promises of sticking it to them would turn out to be
grossly over-optimistic. Still, there’s nothing quite as historically relevant
if you have followed City from the Cowards of Europe speech through to the
present day to turn up boiling with intent and leave with your trousers around
your ankles.
The traffic was so
intense at the Plaza San Juan de la Cruz, there was no option but to hop out
and walk the rest, aware that the normally sedate hordes of Real fans were a
little more than emocianados for the
occasion. Swerving into one last café before the ground, the tv showed pictures
of a flare wielding crowd welcoming the team bus as it edged through the scrum.
Throaty roars of City City The Best Team
in the Land and All The World drifted up through the smoke and fire
crackers. So, this is what Champions League semi finals are like.
A tingling vortex of
noise and expectation carried us on through the ranks of nervous Madrid police
and up the great spirals of Bernabeu Fondo
Norte. The view from the top is exceptional, a great steep twist of tightly
packed seats curving round in a majestic arc. This the scene of daring deeds from Butragueño to Zidane, Di Stefano to Redondo, Camacho to Juanito, Figo to Hugo Sanchez, the Galloping Major and Ivan Zamorano and on through Steve
MacManaman to tonight’s solid dose of Fernando.
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Juntos no hay imposibles - Pic:Mike Hammond |
For several of Fernando’s
mates out on the big Bernabeu stage it is be their last proper call to arms in
a City shirt. The bell has been tolling for months.
We did not have to wait
long before our first dollop of Cityitis arrived in the shape of captain Kompany's
eight minute cameo coming to a sudden and familiar end. The team that struggles
without him, the player that struggles with them. It was like a plot line from
early Mr Ben. Off Kompany hobbled behind the magic curtain, reappearing in the
muscle-bound form of Eliaquim Mangala. Now for some fun and games.
Ten minutes later the
ball, billowing in a strange arc off the stretching form of Fernando, drifts
high and wide of Joe Hart and into the top corner. A burst of noise from the
Madrileños, the like of which we hadn’t heard in Barcelona, sharp, raucous and
triumphant, splitting the hot night air with a whip-crack.
City’s reaction is more
passing across the newly formed back four. More dinks into Fernando and back to
Otamendi again. More little scraped passes aimed at Sagna and Clichy but going
straight into touch. Aguero, lost in the distant fog of City’s forward
positions, is not getting a touch, as De Bruyne, the ginger savior, appears
paralysed with fear of the big occasion. Pepe and Ramos growl from the back
and, as they had done a week earlier in Manchester, look frighteningly solid,
compact and aware of what they need to keep on doing.
City are playing to
strange orders. The team that has delighted in passing the whole world to sleep
in the Premier League this season is suddenly painfully incapable of holding
onto the ball for more than three contacts. Real and their crowd are growing into
their role of unassailable favourites, untouchable aristocrats, as City wither
back into their traditional scruffy Moss Side chancer outfits.
Kroos and Modric, at
ease with the ball, stroke it around, while De Bruyne stutters and chases, flips
and flaps. Toure, slowing even from his first half dawdle, is whipped off
in ignominious fashion, followed shortly after by Navas, suffering from tunnel
vision.
Gareth Bale, later to
be chosen as Marca’s “el Dandy” and the strutting, half fit Cristiano, keep
City fully occupied. Pepe at the back can hardly believe his luck. The English
scrappers have come in their carpet slippers.
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Manuel opts for penalties |
And so it all peters
out. Aguero fires one over with two to go. City’s magnificent
support, trying to suck the team and the ball towards the goal, rock the old ground with songs of encouragement, but the
players don’t want it, cannot find it, daren’t risk it. Instead of the
barnstorming finish we all desire, to go out with a defiant bang, all guns
blazing, City are pushed back for 4 minutes of injury time spent defending.
Pellegrini’s reign, intent on ending on the most imperceptible of light notes, will
have no trumpet blast. The City end, falling silent in the grim realization that
the team is spent, watch the home fans celebrate their second local derby final
in three years.
It is not what our
Atletico taxi driver had wanted. It is not what we had wanted. But here it is.
Manuel’s brain trust ran
out of ideas months ago. Despite the League Cup win, this is the end of a second
consecutive season of considerable underachievement. It is surely a mark of
where City have now arrived that a season involving this ground-breaking
semifinal in Europe and a fourth-ever league Cup win leaves many feeling
distinctly underwhelmed. After Madrid, the incoming Pep will suddenly be aware that
the initial reorganization job needs to be a touch more profound than at first
thought. For Pellegrini, who has made his name from swashbuckling campaigns with
Villareal and Malaga, it is lights out on a feeble exit. Memories of that first
scintillating season of attacking football seem distant now. The first great
City side of the modern era is over. The team that Roberto Mancini assembled,
that Pellegrini took on for a while, has stalled and halted.
As we prepare to
look down on the likes of Yaya and Vincent, Kolarov and Zabaleta, David Silva
and Clichy for perhaps the last time, it is difficult not to feel a deep pang
of sadness. They have formed the basis of the best City team in living memory
and now, in the shadow of the great Bernabeu, we must take our leave of them.
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No, you're el dandy |