A few minutes before Phil Foden made it 2-2, Erling Haaland was seen lugging that huge frame of his after Vinicius Jr. It is not a common sight to see Manchester City’s No 9 tracking back but here he was chasing the Real Madrid forward after Foden had lost possession.
Haaland got back, helping City retrieve possession and it is probably not stretching things to suggest it was the Norwegian’s most meaningful contribution of the match. Running away from goal? He could just as easily have been running away from Antonio Rudiger.
At the Bernabeu 11 months ago, Haaland found himself unable to shake off Rudiger, who brought new meaning to the term touch tight, the City striker even finding Real’s uncompromising centre-half nestled under his right armpit at one stage of the game.
Renewing acquaintances, Rudiger had suggested he would treat his duel with Haaland as something “personal” but, on the night at least, it descended into something of a mismatch. You certainly had to wonder by the end of it whether Rudiger has got into Haaland’s head?
Roy Keane, the former Manchester United captain, had got somewhat carried away the other week by likening Haaland’s general play to that of a League Two player. His touch did routinely fail him here in truth – he lost possession with seven of his 20 touches and misplaced three of his nine passes – but those statistics were probably less shocking than watching a rather cowed, timid Haaland routinely getting outmuscled by a hungry, snarling Rudiger, who does the role of colossal nuisance better than almost anyone.
In the first half, Stefan Ortega was clearly under instruction to go long on occasion to Haaland high up the pitch. But it proved so unsuccessful, with Rudiger bullying Haaland off the ball pretty much every time it came into him, that the tactic had virtually been abandoned in the second period.
Real fans are still probably scratching their heads trying to understand why Rudiger, having contained Haaland so effectively, was dropped for the second leg of their Champions League semi-final last season. Whether the German would have made that much difference on the night given City’s supremacy and Real’s struggles is open to debate but one of the few certainties at the Etihad Stadium next Wednesday is that, barring injury or illness, we will see Rudiger in the starting XI.
He loves to defend. He also loves to wind up his opponents. At one point in the second half, he deliberately moved a free-kick six yards forward to the annoyance of Foden, who threw the ball back and pointed at where it should be taken. Rudiger jokingly thanked Foden for correcting him. He knows every trick in the book.
It seems strange to criticise a player who has scored 30 goals already this season but Haaland has been well short of the levels he showed last term and this might have been arguably his poorest performance in a City shirt, or at least his least effective. He had one shot saved in the seventh minute and that was about as good as his night got.
The troubling thing was that he just did not look like he fancied the tussle with Rudiger and instead it was up to City’s other stars to step up. Not that Rudiger will be lulled into a false sense of security. Everyone knows what happened at the Etihad last season – and everyone knows Haaland has a habit of popping up to score important goals out of nothing.
