The second leg of the semifinals between Manchester City and Villarreal ended in a 2-2 draw, meaning that the second leg of the final between Real Madrid andLiverpool will be in Paris on May 28.
The knockout phase of the Rugby World Cup will be decided by which team lifts the trophy at the Stade de France.
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Logic says. I think they are a better side. I am not sure what degree logic comes into it, having seen Real Madrid's comebacks. Real Madrid have no real competitive games between now and May 28, whereasLiverpool have a real chance of winning the quadruple, as well as an FA Cup final. It can either drain you emotionally and physically or keep you match-fit and sharp. I guess I'm sitting on the fence, but you don't want me to, so I'll stick to logic.
I have to say that. In the final, Thiago can take on Luka Modric in the battle to dictate the game in Paris, while the forward line of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane, Luis Diaz, and Diogo Jota can help the team. It is a close run thing in those areas, but I think that the Reds have a bit more zip to their game. It doesn't count against Real if you point to your European heritage as giving you an X factor in the competition. They can win it because they have more X-factor than any other team and they never know they are beaten. If we take away the emotion and the history and judge it solely on football, then we should see a seventh European Cup win for the Reds.
Laurens thinks that Real Madrid will win the final after everything they have done in this knockout stage. Their destiny is written in the stars. Three miracles were needed to get to the final. They overcame everything to go all the way against Paris Saint-Germain. They have armour that makes them immune. Carlo Ancelotti and his team are probably a better team this season, but they don't have the supernatural powers of the other teams. The team will once again be carried by Benzema, Courtois and Vinicius Junior. In the past seven years, Real have won the European Championship. Their experience is huge. The last time they lost was in 1981 in Paris at the Parc des Princes. It was the first time that the club had scored a goal. They are going to make sure it doesn't happen again.
It can only be Benzema. The Real Madrid forward has put together a string of performances that have put him among the front-runners for this year's Ballon d& Unless you are a world-class player, you don't stay at the biggest club in the world for that long. Benzema has been in that group for a long time, but because he spent so many years playing with and against the best player in the world, the credit and praise that he deserves has been a long time coming. He has shown his class this season.
Benzema won all day long, with his decisive spot kick against City, but this category is a one-horse race, and Modric should be mentioned.
Are you really asking the question? Everyone knows the answer. There is no debate here. Benzema has been on a different planet since the round-of-16 second leg against Paris. He scored a hat trick in the first leg of the quarterfinals. He has 10 goals in this round. He has been unstoppable. He was like a boss to his team. He dominated the defenders like a boss. Even though he wasn't at his best against Manchester City in the second leg of the semifinals, he still found a way to score and assist a goal. He has been amazing. He is the Dream!
Come on now. It is Benzema. It is not even close. Real Madrid are playing the Europa League because they haven't gotten out of the group stage. I can give a shout out to Fabinho, who is still criminally under appreciated, and maybe if Kevin De Bruyne had not left City, we could have a conversation. It is Benzema.
The impact of Luis Diaz led to a second-half comeback by the Reds.
Laurens is 100%. The scrapping of the away goals rule was one of the best decisions recently. There are no calculations required. You have to go for it and play your football everywhere, home or away, and try to score as many goals as you can. We would have had very different games with the old rule. This was the best we have ever had. Everything was exciting. Almost three goals per game have been scored by us so far. We saw teams playing on the road. Is this what a football fan wants? It wouldn't make sense to bring back a rule that would allow you to go all the way to the final without actually winning a match.
Absolutely. At least this season. Longer term, we need a bigger sample size. The away goals rule made sense back in the day, when you were going abroad to a stadium that was hostile to home fans, with rival fans setting off fire alarms at 3 a.m. The away goals made sense to encourage teams to attack because of the home advantage. But times have changed. They lost at home to Inter Milan and drew with Benfica, yet they are in the final. Real Madrid lost at home to Sheriff Tiraspol. The hotels where clubs stay when they travel in the Champions League are the same ones they use all the time. That is the way it is. If you want to make this more fun and easy to understand, scrap this and go with the aggregate score.
What would I do differently? I have been arguing for a long time for ball-in-play time, which is two 30-minute halves and a clock that stops when play stops. The referee blew the final whistle after only three minutes of time was added on, so we wouldn't have had any controversy about it. We will get there one day.
It has been a bad decision and has taken away one of the unique elements of European football. The away goals rule can be argued about whether it encouraged teams to attack or worked the other way, but football is supposed to be about excitement, tension and jeopardy and the away goals rule gave us that. Imagine if the rule still stood when Rodrygo headed in Real's second goal on Wednesday to level the tie on aggregate, but with Real winning on away goals. If a game is tied, it's a good idea to score away from home because it's more difficult and the player who misses their spot kick is responsible for the loss. It would be unfair for an away team to have 120 minutes to score a goal when the home side only had 90 minutes in the first leg.
What would I do differently? I would end the idea of a festival of football, which would give us one-legged semis and the final in a mini-tournament. The return of the away goals rule should be followed.
Steve Nicol and Nedum Onuoha discuss the latest capitulation by Manchester City.
You may be too young to remember, so I will give you a history lesson. The greatest comebacks are Manchester United scoring two goals in the last 60 seconds of the 1999 final to win the Treble, and coming back from a 0-3 deficit to win the 2005 final over AC Milan. If you compare these two comebacks, you can see that it was more difficult for the Reds to overturn a 0-3 deficit from the first leg, but by the hour mark, they were already three up and Barcelona were nowhere to be found. This was more dramatic. Jack Grealish was denied twice in quick succession by Ferland Mendy on the goal line, and Courtois was also denied by the goal line, as Real Madrid were outplayed and the goals that were scored were more important than the ones that were scored.
Laurens: Absolutely not. One of the greatest European comebacks of all time was the four-point destruction of Barcelona at Anfield. The Real Madrid vs. City game was not as big as the one they played earlier in the season. Real Madrid vs. City is not as good asLiverpool vs. Barcelona. Real Madrid had a one-goal deficit going into the second leg. The first leg was at Camp Nou. The Reds had to face Lionel Messi and Barcelona without Roberto Firmino while the Spanish champion had all their players available. The two Rodrygo goals and the Benzema penalty are good goals, but nothing like the quick corner Trent Alexander-Arnold played and Divock Origi's goal to make it four and make the impossible possible. It was made extra special by the fact that the team went on to win the final against Spurs.
Real's comeback against City probably isn't even in the top five of the league. On top of those games already mentioned by Gab, what about Paris Saint-Germain throwing away a four-goal lead against Barcelona in the first leg of the second leg of the cup final in 2017, or the United team having trailed 2-0 in the second leg of the 1999 semifinals against the Italians In the second leg of the semifinals against Ajax in Amsterdam, Lucas Moura scored a hat trick as Spurs came back from a three goal deficit. The only thing that will make City feel better is that they didn't commit the biggest-ever Champions League meltdown, but it will still haunt them for a long, long time.
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