Manchester City vs Real Madrid
Citizens welcome visitors from the capital of Spain for this Champions League semi-final first leg at Etihad Stadium early Wednesday morning Beijing time. Yes, taking a look a historical success and even players' total market value one would definitely expect a relatively tight match.. After all, the hosts have failed to win the Champion League despite having a top-level squad for more than 5 years already. They did make the final last year though. Real Madrid, on the other hand, lifted the trophy 3 times in a row 2016-2018! An amazing achievement indeed! However, their level has come down a lot from these years and the betting market and many analysts ahve failed to fully realize just how much they have declined... Kroos, Modric and many other key players are still good of course but too slow for the absolute top-level of international club football.I want to mention Casemiro too - he is very error-prone. Just follow him closely! Manchester City are, as I have written many times before, the best team on the planet and also have, in my opinion, the best manager in the World, Pep Guardiola. They will control the match with amazingly high-level passing and probably have around 70% ball possession and despite not having a pure World-class striker for this season they will surely break the visitors' defense - probably at least 2 times. Norwegian "beast" striker Erling Braut Håland will join the team for next season and will surely score 25+ goals! Real's defense looked very even unorganized against Chelsea in the previous round. Chelsea are the reigning Champions League champions but far from last year's level so Real would need a defensive miracle to stop the Citizens who are a lot better than Chelsea here. Yes, Real Madrid will win the Spanish LaLiga but The English Premier League is much better, as I have mentioned in many analyses.
We must realize that Real Madrid have heavily over-performed in terms of expected points in LaLiga this season. They have grabbed 13 more points than they would have deserved! An amazing number for this level and this must be one of the reasons for them being over-valued in most of their matches.. They have not truly convinced me in any competition lately and had some luck to beat Chelsea and PSG in the Champions League this spring. Chelsea, made several silly mistakes in the first leg in London and Real do deserve respect for capitalizing on those mistakes but did not create much themselves through organized attacking.. Moreover, Chelsea were the better team in Spain in the 2nd leg and the score after 90 minutes was 1-3 for the English club. Let's also remember that Real were crushed at home 0-4 about a month ago against Barcelona who are, despite recent improvement under Xavi, also far from the level of their glory days some 10-15 years ago.. Manchester City simply do not have any weaknesses and are mentally tough as well. The recent 2-3 loss to Liverpool in FA cup does not worry me at all. The teams have also recently met in The Premier League lately and it was amazingly high-level match that ended 2-2 in Manchester but City were the better team.. Let's also remember that Liverpool are the second best team in the World! Atletco Madrid forced City in to a draw two weeks ago in Madrid but City did not need to win and in all honesty did not give Tico a true chance despite the seemingly narrow 1-0 on aggregate. Real can score here, surely, as they have K. Benzema and a few other fine individuals but as a whole the host are superior and Real would need to be very lucky to avoid a defeat here. The hosts are close to 80% favorites to win!
GOOD LUCK!
