Magic beats control as Guardiola suffers in Madrid’s enchanted canyon

Manchester City were the more coherent team but the white noise and white light of the Bernabéu was decisive in semi-final

Manchester City's head coach Pep Guardiola. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

When the moment came it seemed to strike Daniele Orsato like a surge of static energy. The referee had been phlegmatic at the Bernabéu. He shrugged. He jogged. But this place does something to you. As Karim Benzema fell, ankle tapped by a lunge from Rúben Dias, even before his body hit the turf Orsato’s arm was springing out from his side, ramrod straight, possessed with the voodoo of another of these absurd electrical storms, these nights of white noise, white light, where nothing is ever done until it’s done.

Benzema stepped up and rolled the penalty kick into the empty corner of the net, ran to the crowd and began slapping hands, reaching out, like a demented papal walkabout. And so it came to pass. With 89 minutes and 40 seconds of this semi-final second leg gone, Real Madrid had been on their way out of the Champions League in sickly fashion, pushed to the edge of things by a City team that had been more efficient, more coherent.