Manchester City recovered from a goal down to collect a magnificent Champions League victory at perennial winners Real Madrid and leave the La Liga side’s manager Xabi Alonso precariously holding on to his job.<\/b><\/p>\n
Alonso is under severe pressure following a poor run in the league and a reported clash of culture with his players and the heat will now crank up after failing to hold on to their early advantage.<\/p>\n
The hosts suffered a blow as leading goalscorer Kylian Mbappe was deemed only fit enough to be on the bench, but the France captain did not make an appearance as his team-mates fell to a demoralising defeat.<\/p>\n
City almost suffered a nightmare start when Matheus Nunes tripped Vinicius Jr inside the first two minutes and the referee pointed to the spot, but then awarded a free-kick on the edge of the box after consultation with the video assistant referee (VAR).<\/p>\n
Federico Valverde almost converted the resulting effort, but his drilled shot deflected narrowly wide, while the sprightly Vinicius dinked wide at the far post shortly after.<\/p>\n
It seemed like City had weathered the early storm and were controlling the possession before being hit on the break as Rodrygo collected Jude Bellingham’s cross-field pass and rifled in his first goal since January.<\/p>\n
City, though, were behind for just seven minutes as the visitors scored with their first clear opportunity of the contest \u2013 academy left-back Nico O’Reilly poking home from close range after Josko Gvardiol’s header was scooped back into the danger zone by Thibaut Courtois.<\/p>\n
The English side turned the game around on the stroke of half-time courtesy of Haaland’s penalty after the striker was bundled over in the box by Antonio Rudiger – they could have extended their advantage further but Courtois made a stunning save to deny the Norwegian.<\/p>\n
Real attempted to draw level in the second half with Bellingham chipping over and substitute Endrick flicking a header which clipped the crossbar, but City held on to a tremendous victory.<\/p>\n
More to follow.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester City recovered from a goal down to collect a magnificent Champions League victory at perennial winners Real…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2465,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-625007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-manchester","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115697634929467983","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}