This was a strange, giddy, tipsy kind of game, played out beneath the humid conservatory roof of the Santiago Bernabéu. Brilliant things kept happening, in between periods of not much happening at all. There were long spells of grinding gears. For most of the night the meeting of England’s No 10s, the Foden-Bellingham face-off of your dreams, refused stubbornly to materialise.
And yet as the night wore on the quality of the six goals was increasingly reminiscent of a Kendall Roy birthday party music policy, all bangers all the time. The last of them, Federico Valverde’s equaliser to make it 3-3, was just ridiculous, like an exercise in computer‑generated extreme technique, a static right-footed downward‑smashed full-force volley into the far corner, scythed through a crowd of players with the precision of an elite crown green bowler.
Before that we had Bernardo Silva’s knife-in-the-guts performance-art piece of a free‑kick. There was Phil Foden’s sidestep and corner-ping. Josko Gvardiol produced a casual bouncing corner-spank. By the end the draw probably favoured City, because they get to go home, and because they will surely play better than the first half here. This may end up looking like Madrid’s opportunity.
Otherwise the most notable moment was probably Foden’s intervention with City 2-1 down. It was all the more impressive because until that point he was, as Pep Guardiola pointed out later, “not involved in the game”.
It’s a tough task to come to this stadium and dictate the play. With Kevin De Bruyne ill, Foden had started just behind the Erling Haaland-style presence in City’s attack. He was closed down by Toni Kroos a lot. Otherwise he drifted, unable to find space or passing angles.
At the start of the second half he was duly shifted to the right, with City looking as stodgy and aimless as they ever have in these big games. At which point the lines seemed to narrow, the clock ticked just a little slower, and somehow you just knew it was going to happen, from the moment the space appeared, made by the speed and accuracy of the two preceding passes, the ball fizzed by Silva to John Stones, who played it just as quickly on to Foden.
From the edge of the box he didn’t need to jink or find space, just set himself and with that familiar low backlift spanked a wonderful rising curling shot into the top corner.
Something seemed to lift for City at that point. It felt like a moment in Foden’s own arc, too. Even in a game of this scale, with its many strands, the cultural stuff, the multilayered semiotics in a large group of City fans singing “You’re Just a Shit Barcelona” outside the Bernabéu before kick-off, there was still a basic thrill in the prospect of seeing Foden and Jude Bellingham on the same pitch.
It is a bit of a moment for English football to have two such precociously complete creative talents operating in the boiler room of these two clubs.
Bellingham has been football’s elite‑level breakout star this season, a new mega-brand swimming into view. Foden came to the Bernabéu with 15 goals and four assists in his past 18 games, elevated from touchline hype‑man across town at the Metropolitano Stadium this time last year, to a central creative influence.
Bellingham was also playing No 10 here, lurking just behind Vinícius Júnior, whose speed was presumably considered a weapon against City’s high line. He never looked settled. Early on there was one lovely, pointless flick to Kroos. He waved his arms around, and did an awful lot of moaning when he was either fouled or not fouled. Otherwise City shut him down, Rúben Dias initiating a highly profitable running beef. Bellingham is still very young. It will show at times.
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The start of this game had provided a moment of pure bathos. With less than a minute gone Jack Grealish carried the ball forward and was scythed down. The free‑kick was 30 yards out and to the left. Real Madrid didn’t form a wall, because walls are what other people do. They stood around, handsome, super‑talented, waiting for this to be over.
Silva paused, allowing his brain to whirr and flicker and make the calculations, then produced the most brilliantly horrible, sneaky, sucker punch of a free‑kick, spanking it low and hard past the left hand of Andriy Lunin.
Eduardo Camavinga’s deflected shot made it 1-1 shortly afterwards, a goal that just sort of came out of nowhere, as did Madrid’s second on 14 minutes. From there City had a lot of cold possession, possession that felt like killing time. Madrid don’t really press. They wait. You go ahead. We’ll probably just do something in a bit.
City’s attack was static in those moments. Haaland was technically on the pitch. There is written evidence of that fact. Sometimes players on the fringes are described as occupying defenders. Haaland barely occupies his own shorts in games such as these.
City needed a jolt. They got one from Foden. And by the time he limped off in pain eight minutes before the end, Foden had produced something quite rare, a moment of influence pulled from a night that had seemed to be drifting away from him.