Erling Haaland Gives Man City Edge in Hunt for Champions League Glory

Perhaps this, at last, will be Manchester City’s year. It was seriously tested by Bayern and put under unfamiliar pressure at the back, but was able to handle it. Bayern was not. There wasn’t much in it, there were chances at both ends, but City stood firm and managed to force Bayern into mistakes and the result is that it won the first leg of its Champions League quarterfinal, 3–0.

Manchester City has looked on course for European glory before, never more so than last season when it capitulated late in the semifinal against Real Madrid. Carlo Ancelotti’s side will stand in the way again if it gets by Chelsea in its quarterfinal—assuming nothing unexpected happens in Munich next Wednesday. But this time, City has Erling Haaland. He may have changed how City play, may have made it more direct with an impact on its efforts to control games, but he adds an edge that means when games become a shootout, he offers a firepower that City has at times lacked.

Haaland’s goal was his 11th in seven Champions League games this season and took him to a new all-competitions record for a Premier League player in a single season with 45. He could have as many as 15 more games to play. His goals make him phenomenal, but his influence goes beyond that. He affects how defenders play and that creates space for others and, after a slight dip earlier in the year, he is back in the exceptional form of the autumn.

Yet as good as City was, this was also a story of a Bayern collapse. To say the defeat was self-inflicted would be unfairly to deny the way City forced the errors but still, Bayern did not react well to the pressure it came under—part of the difficulty, perhaps, for a team that dominates so utterly domestically. Something similar happened at the end of the first leg of the previous round against Paris Saint-Germain. Bayern simply doesn’t have to battle very much, and that means its players can seem to lack an edge.

Dayot Upamecano, who looked shaky also at times for France during the World Cup, had a desperate night, misplacing pass after pass and putting his side in difficulty, while goalkeeper Yann Sommer was a mixed bag. The Swiss keeper, only playing because of Manuel Neuer’s broken leg, looked distinctly uneasy at times, constantly threatening to make a mistake. And yet, he also pulled off at least three outstanding saves: one in the first half as, prone on the ground, he somehow kept out İlkay Gündoğan’s volley with an outstretched leg, and then, in the second, tipping a Rúben Dias jab and a Rodri header over the bar.

Yet there was a period of the game when Bayern, with a team packed with pace in forward areas, hinted it might be taking control when it fell behind. Only a stunning block from Dias, spreading himself and extending his right leg with Ederson seemingly going the other way, had denied Jamal Musiala after Joshua Kimmich, having regained possession, had cut the ball back to him. But within two minutes City was ahead.

The strike from Rodri, whipping the ball into the roof of the net from 25 yards, was stunning, but the defending was dismal. Thomas Tuchel had set up with Kimmich and Leon Goretzka as a double pivot precisely to defend that central area 20 to 30 yards from goal, yet Rodri found space there. Musiala was perhaps reckless in his attempt to get back, allowing Rodri to chop inside him, but it was Kimmich’s hesitation in closing him down and the way he turned his back as Rodri hit the ball that were most eye-catching. Tuchel, in the technical area, was understandably furious.

Rodri take a bow! Man City has the lead over Bayern thanks to a stunning goal

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— SI Soccer (@si_soccer) April 11, 2023

Defensively, laxity would keep on costing Bayern. Jack Grealish, so impressive since the World Cup, initiated the second goal, dispossessing Upamecano and playing in Haaland, whose precise cross was headed in by Bernardo Silva. Haaland then added the third, firing in as John Stones headed the ball back across goal.

Bayern’s hope in appointing Tuchel to replace Julian Nagelsmann two weeks ago must have been that he could transform that shaky defense, much as he did in his early weeks as Chelsea manager, but there is a difference between basic structure and ironing out individual laxity.

City, meanwhile, has won nine in a row in all competitions and is playing with an aura of remorseless that should worry Arsenal specifically and everybody else in Europe more generally. But then City has often before in the Champions League looked unstoppable, right until the moment when it has been stopped. The question is whether this season might be different.