A perfectly synchronized blue ensemble called Manchester City shamefully outclassed RB Leipzig in the Champions League on Tuesday. The outstanding player of the game was the former Dortmund player and – how ironic – former Salzburg player Erling Haaland, who scored five goals for the Englishman. Only Lionel Messi and Luiz Adriano had scored that many goals before him in a premier class game.
City coach Pep Guardiola showed mercy on Leipzig and took the insatiable plundering mood off the field after just over an hour. However, it was already 6:0. It will therefore always remain a secret whether Haaland lost a record for eternity. He looked like he was wearing it in his clothes. In the end it was 7-0 on the scoreboard thanks to a dream goal from Kevin De Bruyne in added time. “I don’t want to stand here and look for any excuses. It hurts,” said Leipzig’s Emil Forsberg on Amazon Prime Video. “We weren’t there, we didn’t have a chance.”
In the second game of the evening, Inter Milan reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League for the first time in twelve years. After the 1-0 win in the first leg, a 0-0 win at FC Porto was enough for the Italian cup winners to make it into the round of the top eight teams.
RB Leipzig had made preparations at the beginning of the game to want to build on the second half of the first leg. There were signs of a team that didn’t want to hide and even bravely attacked. But the resolution didn’t last much longer than the snow that had fallen over Manchester shortly after noon. To be more precise: until after three minutes Bernardo Silva, Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gündogan came together – and briefly and impressively demonstrated what a handful of artists with a low center of gravity are capable of. Gündogan’s ball flew well over the crossbar. But the tone was set.
At 30 meters, Haaland takes ten meters from his pursuers
Above all, it became apparent shortly afterwards that Haaland woke up with an enormous desire to live up to his reputation. And Leipzig did it almost single-handedly. It became clear in the eleventh minute when city defender Nathan Aké played a long ball at Haaland – and the Norwegian took ten meters from his guards Willi Orban and Josko Gvardiol over a distance of maybe 30 meters. The goalkeeper Janis Blaswich, who was thoroughly pitiable as the game progressed, just managed to get a foot in between. In the 19th minute, however, a scene reminiscent of Karl Marx followed.
True to one of his maxims, history always happens twice – the first time as a tragedy. The second time as a farce. Tuesday was a good time to see the Marx aphorism confirmed: just a week after the video referee in the Champions League knockout. Borussia Dortmund intervened decisively at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge and imposed an absurd penalty, RB Leipzig suffered a similar fate at Manchester City. This time it was RB defender Benjamin Henrichs who couldn’t resist being beheaded in the penalty area. He had climbed up with Rodri and had been headbutted in the arm. Referee Slavko Vincic decided on a penalty, which Haaland converted (22nd).
He was there again less than two minutes later, this time with a high goal when De Bruyne hit the crossbar with a powerful shot from the penalty area. The Belgian appeared to have listened particularly well when coach Guardiola asked him to do ‘simple’ things. Immediately before half-time, however, it was Haaland again who yelled “goal”: When defender Ruben Días headed the post after a corner and Leipzig’s Amadou Haidara naturally shot Haaland trying to clear – and thus helped make the 3-0 half-time score.
As in the previous week: An English representative throws a Bundesliga club out of the competition
After that, the game continued to measure itself in ball possession for City – and in Haaland moments. Okay, Ilkay Gündogan cheated his way onto the top scorer list shortly after the restart when he was able to score with a low shot and largely unchallenged (48th). But then Haaland came back. In the 54th and 57th minute he made it 6-0 with unadorned but valuable hits.
That meant for Guardiola that the moment had come to bring in Julián Álvarez, an extra at Manchester City’s dress but world champion with Lionel Messi. Although City didn’t succumb to the lethargy they showed in the second half of the first leg, it was only at the very end that they scored a seventh goal. But even so – tragedy or farce – one realization remained as irrefutable as a philosophical truth: Nothing was more deserved than the Bundesliga representative’s exit on English soil, in the case of Leipzig a few corners more than in the previous week during Dortmund’s visit to London .