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There is no professional in football who escapes fear.

He also knows

Pep Guardiola

.

They can already remind him over and over again that there is no coach who has tormented Real Madrid so much, that he will continue to suffer from the impossibility of perfection.

He has won 12 of his 20 matches against the white team.

Little does he care.

At the Etihad, he had his rival on the canvas.

He shook her and hit her viciously.

He scored four goals against him.

But he saw how

Mahrez

missed another three and how

Benzema

denied the surrender.

Guardiola didn't have to wonder how the hell Madrid stayed alive.

He himself knows the answer.

The weight of that "story" to which the Catalan coach himself referred on the eve ruled the scene.

Guardiola, who in this match against Real Madrid tries to contain himself as much as possible in his messages to the media, was cold after the match.

He barely used words in his responses to what had happened.

Without smiling, he denied any suffering: "For me [the meeting] has been just as fun as for the fans."

He assured that his team had played "well", despite the errors in the definition and in the rearguard.

And he limited himself to congratulating his soccer players: «They are the ones who play.

Sometimes they succeed, and other times they fail.

Public messages that contrasted with his furious reaction when he noticed that his Manchester City, with a 2-0 lead in 11 minutes, feigned forgiveness.

He left behind his technical confessor,

Juanma Lillo

.

And with a clenched fist and veins about to burst, he reproached Riyad Mahrez for not giving up a goal sung to Foden in the 26th minute. The anger had more to do with his own embarrassment than with someone else's mistake, with the Algerian seeing how his passing lane was cut off before he himself decided to shoot.

The ball went out.

The same fate befell Foden after De Bruyne left him alone against Courtois just before the half hour mark.

Guardiola could only shake his head, perhaps fearing that Benzema would not forgive as soon as he could.

Because the match, despite the superiority shown in long phases by City, also had many contradictions in the face of missed chances and some rude error in the ball out by

Ederson

or the underplayed

Stones

, who could barely play 35 minutes in the game. right back before being replaced by captain

Fernandinho

.

Guardiola, who had spent a good part of the course using Foden as a false striker, knew how to take advantage of Gabriel Jesus

' sporting good fortune

after he scored four goals against Watford.

The Brazilian responded in a big way, exposing Alaba in the goal with which the game opened, and getting

Militao

and a misplaced

Kroos

into more than one mess with his footwork .

However, and despite the defensive facilities offered by Real Madrid behind the German midfielder -emergency pivot in the absence of

Casemiro-

, the

sky blue

team lacked even more fang.

Especially given the lack of forcefulness of the Madrid defenders.

Mahrez, in fact, made it 3-0 again early in the second half.

An occasion that Foden did not know how to complete either, who met the opposition under

Carvajal

's sticks .

From Stones to Fernandinho

On the shore that most worried Guardiola, the one that the injured Walker could not defend, Manchester City plotted as many joys as sorrows.

Who best personified it was Fernandinho, a midfielder who will turn 37 next May and who, as an involved captain, had to act as a lane.

Fernandinho emerged like no one against Vinicius' defensive invisibility at 3-1.

His cross into the area required Foden's shot on goal.

But Fernandinho discovered the flip side of jubilation too quickly.

Pep Guardiola went for the referee when he understood that a throw-in belonged to his team.

So angry was he that the referee of the match, the Romanian

István Kovacs

, went to the sideline to show him the yellow card.

The coach didn't stop protesting him, and he just closed the scuffle by slapping the judge on the shoulder.

Guardiola had to curse his divinatory skills because that action, apparently episodic and residual, led to the immediate 3-2.

Fernandinho, who knew that nobody had his back, tried to get ahead of

Vinicius

.

His compatriot, however, easily outwitted him and he was able to make his clean drive towards goal.

Bernardo Silva's shot at 4-2 found an answer in the hand of

Laporte

and Benzema's

tribute to

Panenka .

And Guardiola may not even look at that statistic that put City's attacks at 74, compared to Real Madrid's 27.

They're just numbers.

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