Football Matchday Preview and Review

There was an awful lot of speculation pre-game about the kind of starting 11 Pep Guardiola had laid out. Many claimed that he was simply "experimenting". If that was the case, someone ought to tell Pep that the Semi-Final of the Champions League was no place to experiment.  A brilliant overhead ball from all the way from the Lyon defence to striker Toko-Ekambi, who was unable to control the ball resulting it to fall within Maxwell Cornet's reach. He struck the ball well as all City goalie, Ederson could do was watch the ball go into his goal. Kevin de Bruyne is the only consistent City player and he showed his worth by equalising the game in the 69th minute from a good goal Unfortunately for Manchester City, Lyon goalkeeper, Lopes was on his best-ever performance and he denied City several opportunities. Substitute Moussa Dembele silenced his criticism by scoring in the 79th minute and putting Lyon back in the lead. At this stage, it was clear City were ready to go throug...

 A pre-match with nothing out of the blue. A surprise inclusion of Ousmane Dembele in the Barca squad being the only exciting incident, maybe. But who needs an exciting pre-match when the match speaks for itself. Maybe a couple of years ago, the scoreline would have been closer, but the game that was witnessed was a shock for all three sets of fans - those supporting Barcelona, those supporting Bayern and those watching the match for the fun of it. I, for one, was watching it for the fun of it. Everyone watching knew that it was a Bayern game when they opened the scoring in the third minute with a Thomas Muller goal, who was assisted by Lewandowski. Barcelona replied quickly with a counter-attack in the 7th minute and was lucky to see David Alaba put the ball past his own goalkeeper,  Manual Neuer . Ivan Perisic scored through a strong shot from a very tight angle to hand the lead back to Bayern. Six minutes later, Serge Gnabry wrestled past the Barcelona defenders to score a ...

The only worthwhile pre-game news was the absence of ace striker Timo Werner for his departure from Leipzig to Chelsea. As the news of his absence spread, lesser people began to even look at Leipzig to win this game. Unfortunately for Athletico fans, players like Marcel Sabitzer, Youssef Poulsen and goalscorer Daniel Olmo. Not to mention, goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi also came in with vital saves during the game. After a pretty dull first half, where Leipzig did a bunch with continuous attacks on the Athletico defence, with plenty fouls being drawn in. The goalless first-half lead to an exciting second half, where Leipzig scored in under six minutes, with 51 minutes on the clock. With a great number of passes among the players before the goal, all Olmo had to do was head in a perfectly weighted ball from Sabitzer.  Cue to the moment wonderkid, Joao Felix was subbed in by the manager, Diego Simeone. Cue his link-up play with Olivier Giroud. And cue the penalty given the moment after. It...

Before the game, all anyone could talk about was how PSG's wonderkid, Kylian Mbappe had made a miraculous recovery from his injury. Atalanta laid out a formation that suited their attacking style. They played their 3-4-1-2 style, with the captain, Alejandro Gomez distributing balls to the two strikers ahead of him. It was certain that they weren't afraid of PSG's attack. PSG lined up with their usual 4-3-3, with Neymar and Icardi swapping their roles while going forward. PSG started the game on the front foot with Neymar dribbling past the Atalanta defenders like they didn't even exist. He played out two world-class balls that should have been converted by Pablo Sarabia and Mauro Icardi, but both lacked the bit of pace Mbappe got into the game. Neymar, too, missed two sitters that a player of his calibre should have scored. Eventually, PSG was made to rue their missed chances as Atalanta striker, Pasalic scored a brilliant first-touch goal into the corner of Keylor  Nav...