The two sides drew 3-3 in the first round and City went 4231 in the second round with Rubendias, Akanji, Gvardiol, Walker at the back, Rodri, DeBruyne at the back, Grealish attacking midfielder Foden on both flanks, B. Silva, and Haaland up front
Real Madrid played 433, with defenders Rüdiger, Nacho, Mendy, Carvajal, midfielders Kroos, Camavinga, Valverde, and forwards Bellingham, Vinicius and Rodrygo.
City are given a 4231 formation, but it actually looks like it should favor a 4141, with DeBruyne going up, while Real Madrid are more like a diamond 442 counter-attacking formation
Initially the two teams played a more balanced game and Real Madrid were more backward looking to intercept the ball in midfield to launch a counter attack, City pressed the attack and sure enough, as in the previous game, there were gaps in the defense and again they couldn't resist the speed of Real Madrid's forward line, and in the 11th minute Valverde got on the end of a Bellingham cross on the right and after Vinicius piled in Rodrygo sprinted down to the 6-yard box , intending a first time clearance to break through, was blocked by Ederson but bounced back to Rodrygo's feet allowing him to break through again.
City's defense had serious holes in it. From the counter attack Bellingham were unable to clear the ball in the first place. Later, when Vinicius reached the wing it was an easy cross.RubenDias failed to disconnect and Walker in front of the goal failed to clear into a slip.Not only did this give Rodrygo the chance to shoot, because of Walker going down Rodrygo was able to start a second time with no defense. Let's just say that City's defense got itself disrupted on this runback. The fact is, stopping to clear the car and the ball on this runback wasn't easy. If City press too far it will always be wrong
Manchester City fell behind and began to pressure, Real Madrid directly transformed into a completely defensive counterattack, Manchester City's two-wing attack, deliberately increase the width of the side, Grealish deliberately pulled to the almost left side of the position to break through, Real Madrid did not dare to go out to stop him, Real Madrid's defense is basically contracted in the penalty area, which allowed Manchester City to completely control the left and right wings of Real Madrid in the first half
City were also doing good damage down the right. Later on, DeBruyne started to pull right wing support, releasing the ball and would go straight into the box. Before the end of the first half, he made at least three high-speed attacks, which made Real Madrid work very hard here, but Real Madrid consolidated the central defense as much as possible, so City couldn't rush in directly from the center, including Haaland and Foden
At the start of the second half, City attacked like crazy throughout, their passing distances got longer straight away, the attacking players in front of them didn't hold the ball, but directly started to reverse the offside, planning to force a shot in front of the box, Real Madrid started to get a little bit anxious and tried to push back to the front, but City didn't want to slow down, and started to attack quickly in the second half
Real Madrid quickly increased its back line to six. It also widened the width of the defense. Try not to let City come in from the flanks. In the middle of the road, Harbin had no chance to touch the ball. City has been attacking from the flanks, hitting more than 10 corners. Guardiola plans to continue to strengthen the left side of the attack. He replaces Grealish on the doku and plans to increase the left side of the rush
Since Doku has been on the field, he has been trying to break down the left side. When Real Madrid saw him on the pitch he immediately put Valverde on defense so that Doku couldn't find a chance to face their shutdown. It wasn't until the 76th minute that Doku forced a quick pass down the line, only for Rüdiger to make a mistake, he tried to clear the ball but didn't kick it far enough and he fell over, the ball turned out to land directly in front of DeBruyne who scored directly to his left, 5 yards from the top of the goal.
