Manchester City 1 Paris Saint-Germain 0
De Bruyne 76
Zonally, Manuel Pellegrini is cute.
This was a two-legged tie of very fine margins.
When Aguero stroked his penalty low and wide in the first half, I tweeted that he knew 0-0 would do.
A nervous joke. When the pressure’s on, I become frivolous.
It was a very tactical second leg in which PSG missed the running power of Matuidi.
The penalty miss by Aguero dampened the atmosphere.
But City managed to nullify PSG very well until young Kevin stepped up to score the winner.
The weight of his passing is so sublime that it reminds me of calligraphy.
The Belgian maestro must have been Chinese in his previous life and studied foot-writing in a monastery since he was 9 years old. Every stroke of the brushes he calls feet seems to contain a lifetime of practice, a technique honed by endless repetition and religious devotion.
In 76 minutes, City got a corner on the left and kept the loose ball alive in the front third until Fernandinho laid it off to De Bruyne just outside the D and he took one touch and bent his sidefoot shot round keeper Kevin Trapp.
Skipper Joe Hart, with two fine saves from wicked Zlatan free-kicks, had kept City in the game until that lovely shot bounced and almost kissed the base of the post on the way in.
A beautiful goal by a fabulous footballer put Manchester City right up there with the big boys like Real Madrid, maybe with Bayern and Barcelona.
Two tight quarter-final matches, City went though 3-2 on aggregate.
They played very intelligently, won 95% of their tackles – and that goal was their only shot on target.
REALLY BIG NIGHT FOR THEM.
And Manuel Pellegrini is still a clever tactician.
When the Champions League is reduced to four clubs, we can start talking about who might win it.
Full disclosure : I have a soft spot for City because the club was near the University.
We could walk up to Maine Road through Moss Side, where Jamaican dudes stood outside betting shops and sometimes said, “Got a light, white man?” I never had a light because I didn’t smoke.
We always stood in the Kippax, me and Johnny and Keith, two of the university team. If we had a Saturday morning game in the Lancs Amateur Cup, we could sometimes get to OId Trafford or Maine Road.
Saw Geoff Hurst score twice in a 3-1 victory by West Ham soon after West Ham won the World Cup. Hurst was a different player from the season before. So confident now. One of his goals was a shot from 25 yards!
Interviewed charismatic coach Malcolm Allison for our fortnightly student newspaper, spending a morning on the pitch with Big Mal and the players, and asked him questions in his small changing room while Crossan, Summerbee, Hislop and company cavorted in the big bath a few feet away.
It was nice for a football-mad student to meet some stars and write about them.