"Football is unpredictable." That's how Pep Guardiola summed up Manchester City's heartbreaking elimination from the Champions League.
After Riyad Mahrez's second-half strike put City in a commanding 5-3 aggregate lead against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu, Guardiola could only watch from his technical area as his players conspired to collapse in truly remarkable fashion. Two goals in the space of 89 seconds from Rodrygo hauled Europe's comeback specialists level, before a Karim Benzema penalty early in the first period of extra-time finished City off.
Despite his post-match analysis, Guardiola did everything he could to predict how Real Madrid would play, and set his team up in a way to give them the best possible chance of progression. In the end, something unprecedented happened: for the first in six seasons, Guardiola was entirely blameless for City's Champions League elimination.
READ MORE: Kyle Walker let down by horrible Man City finale after masterclass
From minute one to 120, Guardiola got everything spot on. Wednesday night was on the players. Guardiola admitted after the game that his side did not play well in the opening 45 minutes, but that they were rarely threatened by the hosts. That was largely because City did not allow Real Madrid to build any sort of momentum or string together more than five or six passes at a time.
Selecting Phil Foden and Gabriel Jesus in the front three allowed City to press Madrid relentlessly, forcing the likes of Eder Militao, Nacho Fernandez and Dani Carvajal into plenty of errors. On a night when City didn't actually need to score, Pep instructed Bernardo Silva to drop deep to receive the ball, forming a double-pivot with Rodri. This allowed City to keep possession and slow the game down when they wanted, as the extra body so close to defence meant that there was always an outlet to escape Madrid's own press.
City seemed to lose a bit of composure in the 10 minutes after half-time, and the withdrawal of the injured Kyle Walker looked like it would not help matters. Yet within a minute, Mahrez had scored, and Guardiola's substitutions had played a huge role.
Oleksandr Zinchenko and Ilkay Gundogan, introduced for Walker and Kevin De Bruyne, linked up superbly to escape the press and set Bernardo Silva on his way. He teed up Mahrez and the winger finished in devastating fashion.
In the aftermath of the match there has been widespread criticism of Guardiola's decision to withdraw De Bruyne after 72 minutes and Mahrez after 85, but both decisions were right in those moments. De Bruyne did not have his best night, and in the latter stages of a game where City needed to exert more control, Gundogan was a better option. Of course De Bruyne's attacking upside is higher, but he did little over 72 minutes to suggest that he would cause Madrid any great danger.
With City minutes away from reaching the final, withdrawing Mahrez also made sense. Like De Bruyne, he is one of City's more dynamic, risk-taking attackers, and one not known for tracking back. Bringing on Jack Grealish almost proved a masterstroke too; the England star is known for his ability to keep the ball, draw fouls and run down the clock, and he also showed flashes of brilliance by twice going close to sealing City's win. What happened between 89:21 and 90:50 was utter lunacy on the part of Guardiola's players and not something he himself could have prevented or planned for.
Madrid flooded the box with attackers and scored - fair enough. Knowing Madrid's history of rallying immediately after scoring a late goal, and the fact that they are a team that feeds off momentum, Guardiola would not have wanted his side to give them the ball back straight away. But that is exactly what they did.
Ederson hoofed the ball up the pitch, and 80-odd seconds later City's two-goal lead had vanished. As for what Ruben Dias was thinking when he dived in on Benzema three minutes into extra-time, only he knows.
To lay blame at Guardiola's door is to buy into the easy and lazy myth that he is a Champions League 'bottler', that he is cursed in the competition or that he is some sort of fraud. In reality, on the most painful of nights for City, the coach got everything right.
Sign up to our City newsletter so you never miss an update from the Etihad Stadium this season.
