Erling Haaland on Tuesday scored his 45th goal of the season as Manchester City took a commanding 3-0 lead over Bayern Munich in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League quarter-final tie.
Rodri and Bernardo Silva were also on target for the English champions, who took a giant stride toward finally conquering Europe for the first time.
Victory was sweet for City manager Pep Guardiola as he came up against his former club for the first time since leaving Bayern for Manchester in 2016, but he said that the job is not yet done.
Photo: AP
“I’ve been three years there, and I know in Europe this team is special. To knock out these type of teams you have to make two good games not just one,” Guardiola said.
“I know exactly what we have to do there, They are capable to score one, two, three goals. We have to do our game with huge personality,” he said.
City also partially settled a Champions League score with Bayern manager Thomas Tuchel, who beat Guardiola’s men to lift the trophy as Chelsea manager in the 2020-2021 final.
Tuchel was appointed less than three weeks ago by the German champions with one eye on this tie, and he believed his side deserved more.
“I try to not allow my players to focus on the result, because it is not the deserved result, it does not tell the story of this match,” Tuchel said.
“I’ve seen so many good things that I refuse to just focus on the result. You may say: ‘That’s not Bayern,’ but I was very proud on the sideline, we were courageous and showed the right character,” he said.
City fought off interest from Bayern among other European giants to win the race to sign Haaland a year ago for nights like this, and the Norwegian played his part in a clinical performance.
Haaland uncharacteristically fluffed his lines with the first big chance of the game when he sent a weak shot straight at goalkeeper Yann Sommer.
At the other end, City were grateful for a brilliant block from Ruben Dias to prevent Jamal Musiala putting Bayern in front.
Rodri then showed the forwards how it is done, as the Spaniard took aim from long range on his weaker left foot and curled a sumptuous shot into the top corner on 27 minutes.
Bayern picked up Sommer in the January window as an emergency measure after Manuel Neuer’s season was ended by a skiing accident.
The Swiss international proved the value of that move with a number of vital saves to keep Bayern in the tie, starting with an outstretched leg to deny Ilkay Gundogan, but Bayern were made to regret not making their bright start to the second period count.
Leroy Sane twice came close to haunting his former club with powerful efforts that were beaten away by Ederson, before Matthijs de Ligt and Kingsley Coman had headers from close range blocked by desperate City defending.
City turned the screw in the final quarter to take a potentially decisive lead to Bavaria next week.
Haaland showed there is more to his game than goals with a perfectly weighted cross for Silva to head in City’s second 20 minutes from time.
Sommer then produced a fine stop low to his left to turn Julian Alvarez’s shot to safety, but City were not to be denied their third and Haaland got his goal as he stretched out a telescopic right leg to turn John Stones’ knockdown beyond Sommer.
Alvarez fired another effort just wide and Sommer needed finger tips to turn over Rodri’s header as City went in search of a final flourish.
In Tuesday’s other game, Inter put one foot into the Champions League semi-finals with a comfortable 2-0 win at SL Benfica, with Nicolo Barella and Romelu Lukaku netting in Lisbon.
The Italians, three-time winners, took a commanding quarter-final first-leg lead at the Estadio da Luz, inflicting Benfica’s first defeat in the competition.
“It’s been one of our best games this season,” Inter midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan told British broadcaster BT Sport. “We were dominating all over the pitch. We were doubling up and were everywhere, helping each other and we got [rewarded] for it.”
“We’ve done a great job, but it’s still not over, we still have to face them in a week and we know it’s not going to be easy,” Mkhitaryan added.
TITLE CAMPAIGN: The victory sent the Monkeys to the Taiwan Series for the third time in the past four seasons as they seek their first championship since 2019 The stage is set for the Taiwan Series after the Rakuten Monkeys on Monday beat the Uni-President Lions 4-3 in Game 5 of the CPBL Challenger Series in Kaohsiung. The Monkeys, who entered the top of the ninth scoreless, tied the game with a three-run blast by Lin Chih-ping and scored the winning run in the 10th on an RBI single by Lin Li, a three-time batting champion in the CPBL. Both players entered the game as pinch hitters. “The coach told me to stay prepared as a pinch hitter in the later part of the game. My teammates had
The Ministry of Sports on Wednesday night called for the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) to address issues in Taiwanese soccer after national manager Huang Che-ming on Tuesday resigned following Taiwan’s elimination in AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Taiwan on Tuesday were thrashed 6-1 by Thailand in their Group D tie at Taipei Municipal Stadium. Taiwan finished with no points, after losing all four of their matches, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Huang made his surprise resignation at a post-match news conference, following three losses since he took over the team from English coach Gary White in August. Huang
For a second straight day, protests by La Liga players against staging a regular-season game in Miami, Florida, in December were censored or not fully broadcast for television audiences. The television feed of Barcelona’s home game against Girona switched right before kickoff to an exterior view of the stadium, which only showed part of the field from a distance. That impeded home audiences from seeing the teams’ players standing still for the first 15 seconds in opposition to La Liga’s plan to hold the Barcelona-Villarreal game across the Atlantic on Dec. 20. The broadcasts of the initial moments after kickoff of the
HIT AND RUN: Toronto manager John Schneider got his wish that his team ‘find some slug in the air out here,’ as the Blue Jays combined to total 611m of homers Tired in Toronto, the Blue Jays slugged in Seattle. Vladimir Guerrero Jr and George Springer on Wednesday woke up the Jays, as Toronto hit five home runs to rebound from an early deficit, routing the Mariners 13-4 and closing to 2-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). Toronto had 18 hits — all within the first three pitches of each at-bat. “If they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive,” Guerrero said. Seattle starter George Kirby gave up eight of the hits. “I wasn’t really executing when they got
RSS