Champions League: Real Madrid overturns Manchester City in overtime and qualifies for final

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beaten 3-4 on the outward journey, the Madrids torn the extension in additional time, before bringing the English to fall thanks to a penalty from Karim Benzema. They will face Liverpool in the final, May 28, at the Stade de France.

Le Monde with AFP

Large clubs are immortal, and Real Madrid is the most spectacular example. The Spanish club signed a new fantastic rise on Wednesday May 4, in its lair of Santiago-Bernabeu to overthrow, in the semi-final return of the Champions League, Manchester City (3-1) in overtime.

left for dead after the opening of Riyad Mahrez’s score (0-1, 73 e ) which offered two goals ahead of the English,-4-3 winners at the Go -, Real has further achieved the unthinkable thanks, this time, to its young Brazilian prodigy Rodrygo, entered the 68 e minute and author of two goals in the space of a few seconds (90 e

é>, 90 e +1) to push the match into overtime.

and at the 95 e minute, the usual hero Karim Benzema, silent and imprecise so far -he still delivered a decisive pass on the equalization of Rodrygo -, found his CAPE, and transformed a penalty that he had caused himself, to propel Real into the final, on May 28, at the Stade de France against another English club, Liverpool.

This is the first time that Real Madrid has managed to qualify after losing the first leg of a semi-final on the continental scene. Previously, the Merengues had failed eight times.

still missed for Guardiola

But this season is the “unreal” Madrid: after the epic reversal of the situation against Paris-Saint-Germain in the round of 16 (0-1, 3-1), the incredible rise against Chelsea in quarters (3-1, 2-3 after extension), and the odyssey of the first leg in Manchester a week ago (3-4), the team led by Carlo Ancelotti added a new page to his notebook epics of the continental season 2021-2022.

Karim Benzema, May 4, 2022, in Madrid. Karim Benzema, May 4, 2022, in Madrid. Javier Soriano/AFP

four days after having become the first coach to win the five major European football championships, Ancelotti, the man who had led Real to “Decima”, his Tenth Champions League in 2014, can also become the first technician in history to win a fourth.

For Pep Guardiola, on the other hand, the disillusionment is immense: the Catalan technician, hated in Madrid, still runs behind a new coronation in the Champions League after the two titles gleaned with Barça in 2009 and 2011, and will not offer Not a second final in the Skyblues, after the one lost last year against Chelsea (0-1). The Citizens will still have to wait to lift the first “big ears” in their history.

Long impermeable to Spanish assaults, and even scratchy by the goal of Mahrez and the huge occasion of the 87 e , with a ball saved on its line by the Madrid Ferland Mendy and a strike from Phil Foden who shaved the right amount of Thibaut Courtois, the English gave in to the worst time.

Conversely, the double of Rodrygo relaunched the players of Ancelotti, carried once again by their captain Karim Benzema, author of a breathtaking season. In the final, the French center forward will face its main competitor for the Ballon d’Or, Sadio Mané. But the whole planet is almost already acquired by the cause of Benzema version 2021-2022, the best of his career, which, at 34, has only one march to climb to offer its fourteenth continental crown to the eternal Real Madrid.

/Media reports.

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