Colin Sheridan: Erling, I feel your pain, though Pep does not
TOUGH LOVE: Manchester City's Erling Haaland (left) shakes hands with manager Pep Guardiola after being substituted. Photo credit: Martin Rickett/PA Wire.
Association football is a funny old game, especially when plucky underdogs Real Madrid are hailed as the saviours of a game perpetually held at gunpoint by oligarchs and state ownership.
Their eventual triumph over Manchester City on Wednesday at the Etihad had a touch of the David versus Goliath about it. An upset. The rebels infiltrated the Death Star and brought down the Evil Empire.
Their tactics at the end of extra-time resembled the good old days of Irish football when we could squeeze a result away in Moscow, Richard Dunne impersonating a spartan. Madrid revelled in their own insolence.
They hacked and shovelled their way out of hole after hole. Their star man, Jude Bellingham, put in a shift a coal miner would be proud of.
Their skipper, Nacho Fernández, gave a performance for the ages. Madrid’s stand-in keeper, the Ukrainian Andriy Lunin was shaky in the air but unpassable on the ground. Antonio Rüdiger’ display was worthy of a poem.
Yet, for all of the bravery of their endeavour, it was barely enough to draw with City, who - in this form - are playing football at a level beyond everybody else.
Had it been anybody else but Carlo Ancelloti’s Madrid, Pep Guardiola’s team would’ve breezed into a Champions League semi-final with a performance so rich in quality it almost defied description.
Kyle Walker was immense. Kevin de Bruyne should’ve had a hat-trick. Sub Jérémy Doku gave the type of cameo the late John Cazelle would’ve been proud of. The man he replaced - the embattled Jack Grealish - still did enough damage to almost score twice.
The only misfiring weapon in their arsenal was the hapless Erling Haaland, a man who last season looked like he’d dominate the sport for a decade. This season, despite scoring 26 goals, the Norwegian has often looked incredibly bad at football.
One wonders whether Pep Guardiola will tolerate another season of Haaland’s bespoke brand of inefficacy. As a man who stands six foot five myself, I’ve always argued that you actually need to be a full 20% better than everybody else at pretty much everything, to break par.
Try just standing around in a room by yourself at a funeral. If you’re not doing it right, you look like an absolute fool, while a lad five inches smaller than you doing just as poor a job can easily get away with more.
Erling, I feel your pain, but I somehow doubt Pep is as forgiving as those who tolerate my inability to hit the back of anything other than the queue for the jacks at half time.
His size, so often a blessing on the field, was on Wednesday night a curse which utterly exaggerated his lack of impact.
Pep, so regularly maligned for his over-willingness to tinker on big nights, may lament his lack of bravery in not tinkering more.
Madrid were ready for Haaland, but might have been unnerved had the Argentine Julián Álvarez instead led the City line. It was that kind of night.
The kind when very little was as it seemed, bar the quality of the contest which Brian Kerr had the temerity to describe at full-time as “not a particularly great game.” Mother of God.
Maybe I don’t watch enough football. Maybe I’m easily pleased. But the pace at which the ball moved was beyond literally anything I’d ever seen before.
While the final product lacked the outrageous calibre of the first-leg, the theatre of it all, the desperation of City and the resolve of Madrid - it was cinematic in its scale and operatic in its drama.
One of the few occasions you were happy penalty shoot-outs existed, as it seemed the only logical solution to a hitherto unsolveable problem.
Which brings us to another conundrum, one so confounding those burdened by lending it their discerning support must question their sanity every season around about this point.
Arsenal’s inability to put a compromised Bayern Munich side to the sword is a stain on Mikel Arteta’s claims to be the man who’s turned the club around.
No one act of ineptitude was more galling than star man’s Bukayo Saka’s failure to clear the first man with a stoppage time corner.
It summed up the Gunners unforgivable dearth of resolve, something Madrid have in buckets and spades.
The beauty of what happened on Wednesday night is that, in sport, nothing is guaranteed. Arsenal and others cannot hide behind the defence of “what’s the point?” as they point to Man City and their war chest.
Finishing second or third or forth should not be celebrated when European trophies are there, waiting to be won by those that want them most.
And make no mistake. Madrid want it most.
At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a lot of noise was correctly made regarding the meeting of East and West. The appropriation and respect of different cultures. Alcohol free zones.
The absence of “fan culture.” A first major world tournament in a muslim country was always going to present some novel challenges, and, notwithstanding the gargantuan elephant in the room that is the sportswashing that brought the World Cup there in the first place, history will regard the tournament as qualified success, if only in the cultural sense.
You would never suspect such concerns about an Olympics in Paris, yet, three months out from the summer games and the absurd situation of the dress code for the hosts being different from their guests is now almost certain to be a reality.
Last September the International Olympic Committee (IOC) made clear that athletes in Paris can represent themselves and their faith, as well as their country. This stance is at odds with French law, which prohibits the wearing of "ostentatious" religious symbols in some contexts, such as in state schools and by civil servants.
It outlawed full-face coverings in 2010, and in June last year, France's Council of State upheld a ban on women footballers wearing the hijab.
The UN has addressed the issue directly, saying women should not be forced to abide by dress codes, after the French government said athletes representing France would be barred from wearing headscarves during this summer's games in Paris.
“No one should impose on a woman what she needs to wear, or not wear,” the organisation said. "For the Olympic Village, the IOC rules apply.”
In response, sports minister Amelie Oudea-Castera confirmed that the French Olympic team, as an institution representing and funded by the French public, is bound by French law, and therefore now headscraves would be worn.
As the games approaches, the conversation on freedom of religious expression will grow louder and louder, testing the durability of liberte, egalite, fraternite.
It will be another chapter to what already promises to be a fascinating Olympics, on and off the track.
Last week the curtain fell on one of the greatest rookie seasons in NBA history. Victor Wembanyama, the 7' 4" French sensation surpassed all the hype that greeted his arrival to the San Antonio Spurs, breaking records in offence and defence, and confirming himself as the best prospect to enter the league since LeBron James.
The Spurs failed to make the playoffs a fact that only amplified Wembanyama’s unicorn status, as he showed showed incredible maturity to carry a flagging franchise.
The scary part is, he will only get better. Another reason to look forward to Paris.
As Derry footballers are about to find out, losing early in the championship may well lead to a longer life. Mickey Harte’s charges were the form team entering the championship, but the worry always was a long and successful league campaign coupled with Glens run in the club championship would cost them in the short term. That’s theory will now be tested. If they are last men standing, it’s even more proof the current structure is not fit for purpose. Losing should matter more.
