There is a lot of discussion about how Manchester City dominated Real Madrid on Wednesday. For instance, Jamie Carragher implied that the better team lost by mentioning that the best team does not always win the Champions League. The evidence for this claim is solid: Counting this season, there have been 70 editions of the Champions League, and English teams have won it only 15 times. Obviously, the best team has not won the title at least 55 times.
This is baloney. Discounting referee errors—or potential intentional errors if you ask Chelsea fans about the 2009 semifinal—the best team always wins. The explanation is simple: The better team scores more and concedes fewer. The detractors’ problem is that their criteria for what constitutes a better team are subjective to their opinions and not the scoreboard. For instance, possession and creating chances are important, but finishing chances and brilliant goalkeeping are not.
Wednesday’s tie—and the punditry around it—is a clear demonstration of this fallacy.
Andriy Lunin’s performance this season has been an indication that Real Madrid is not a good team because a superior team’s goalkeeper should only distribute the ball on his feet instead of saving shots, the logic goes. Indeed, distribution is important and helpful, but to suggest that a brilliant shot-sopping performance is evidence for an inferior team entirely overlooks a small detail: Goalkeepers are allowed to use their hands to block shots. The key function of the position is not distribution on their feet but using their hands. Furthermore, the fallacy that a good goalkeeping performance means that the team played poorly is offensive to goalkeepers because it means that they are not a part of the team.
It is indisputable that there is a bias in favor of attackers in football. The only center-backs to ever win the Ballon d’Or are Franz Beckenbauer, Mathias Samer, and Mathias Samer—and the last two did so for their playmaking capabilities as sweepers. Lev Yashin is the only goalkeeper to have won the award—nobody else has come close. We have become accustomed to punishing teams and players for defensive masterclass, and that logic leads to the nonsense that Real Madrid did not play well.
Paying well means executing your plan for the game. Real Madrid accomplished this objective, albeit not flawlessly. And even then, the plan was not to defend for 90 minutes—and Real Madrid did no such thing.
If you cut the part of the part of the match when Real Madrid was ahead 0–1, which is between minutes 12 and 76, it was an even match. Real Madrid relied on counterattacking and pressed City higher on the pitch. The middle third was more disputed. Real Madrid possessed the ball more, instead of clearing it without a target recipient. The first two shots of the game came from Real Madrid, first with Edurardo Camavinga’s long-distance one and then Rodrygo’s goal. The only semi-chance that the hosts had was Kevin De Bruyne’s poor 8th-minute cross from their right. Otherwise, the game was even.
After the equalizer, Carlo Ancelotti introduced Luka Modric and Brahim Diaz—and later Lucas Vazquez—to his squad. Real Madrid still was defending more than keeping possession, but it played more like before Rodrygo’s goal. It pressed higher on the pitch. After winning the ball, it started counterattacking rather than simply clearance. While the 120-minute expected goals are 2.73 to 1.4 in City’s favor, the extra-time statistics are much closer. Real Madrid had a .3 expected goal, and City’s was .48.
Ancelotti’s plan makes perfect sense. Real Madrid was playing an away game against the second-best team in the world which relies on possession. So he asked his team to rely on counterattacks to score an early goal and prepared them for a defensive masterclass. Counterattacks and a higher block would have broken down Madrid’s defensive structure and opened spaces for City to score another goal. Instead, Real Madrid retorted to clearance when it was ahead. If not for a mistake by Antonio Rudiger, it would have worked perfectly.
Rudiger’s mistake led to levelling the scoreboard. So Ancelotti first brought in Modric for Toni Kroos. Modric, especially with his fresher legs, is better at pressing higher on the pitch, which he did after coming in. Brahim came in soon after for Rodrygo, but he played more centrally—also to press the opponents higher on the pitch.
Camavinga has been criticized for poor distribution during the game, but it is quite likely that it was by design—he never meant to distribute the ball to begin with. After Real Madrid returned to counterattacking, his passes became more accurate. Real Madrid’s 90th-minute counterattack is the best example of this, and it was reminiscent of a similar play at the same stadium. Both times, he received the ball in Madrid’s box, calmly passing it to Vini Jr. who waiting outside. Then, Vini committed a foul and the attack died. This time, he flicked it to Brahim, who could have scored if not for Rodri’s foul, resulting in a yellow card. This sequence would happen more during the extra-time, as Real Madrid players began passing the ball to their attackers after winning possession, instead of clearing it.
Last, the detractors ignore mental strength. Being bombarded by the second-best team in the world at the Etihad for 64 minutes and not losing their nerves—or legs—is quite an accomplishment, a strength we have come to associate with Real Madrid. It is certainly a result of Ancelotti’s work, the elders’ mentorship, and the club’s aura. But it worked because the most experienced coach in history prepared his players for it and then trusted them with the task.
Ancelotti planned to score and defend the lead. For 76 minutes, things went according to his plan. Had Real Madrid conceded earlier, it would have returned to counterattacking then, just like it did after De Bruyne’s equalizer.
Detractors are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. The fact of the matter is that the better team is the one that wins the tie by scoring more—including the penalty shootout. Real Madrid did just that. Real Madrid’s superior goalkeeping, elite defending, and more clinical finishing do not make it inferior because those are as important as creating chances. Manchester City was better at creating chances, but as Pep Guardiola came to realize in 2022 chances are useless if you cannot put them in. The better team is measured not by how many chances it creates but by how many it puts in.
Both teams had their plans for the game, but the better team won because it executed its plans better according to the need of the game at any given moment—low-block and clearance when you are ahead, and mid-block and counterattacks when it is a tie.
