2021 Champions League Final

Manchester City 0-1 Chelsea

Not sure why I was so lazy about writing about the Champions League this year, I watched every game since the Round of 16. I thought the winner of Bayern/Paris St. Germaine in the quarters would yield the winner of the tourney, but PSG couldn't get past Man City and that was that. Going into this I didn't see much difference between the two teams, both good squads capable of scoring goals.

Man City came out dominating the time of possession but they never seemed any more dangerous around the goal than Chelsea did playing a defensive shell with an aggressive counter attack. 

Chelsea was able to hook up on a counter pass up the middle right before halftime. Left forward made a run up the sideline dragging his defender out of an offside trap position, Kai Harvertz makes a run up the middle, beautiful pass from the defender (think Brady hitting Gronk over the middle), able to juke the goalie (hmmm....handball on the keeper?), pitched it into an empty net. A thing of beauty. I love goals right before halftime.  And that's all it took. 

As for Chelsea's game plan: look, I'm okay with playing Timo Werner, I've watched a lot of Bundesliga and I know that dude can score, but he hasn't been hot lately and it seems to me you'd rather have the more talented ball handler (Pulisic) to run the counter. Chelsea's plan all along was a sagging defense looking to fast break, seems like Pulisic is the best guy to run that for you, not sure why he wasn't in there the whole time. Yes, I get it: they scored before he got in and didn't score with him (although he should've). 

Both teams got a fair amount of shots, a fair amount of decent looks at goal but just the one goal got converted. The defense was tight. I thought Man City finally found something in trying to get Raheem Sterling loose on the left wing. But then around the 65th minute, they subbed him out right when they were ready to spring him. Oh well. I know he's been injured lately but he was quite John Wall-like in his absurd bursts of speed away from the defender. If they could've got that same kind of action from Aguero, then that move would've made sense. Also, de Bruyne took a tough shot, left out looking all woozy. 

Felt bad that Pulisic (subbed in around the 65th minute) wasn't able to finish on that breakaway. Man, he had the keeper beat, lotta goal to shoot at, oof, that one hurts. 

From beginning to end the game was all about Chelsea's defense parrying Man City's attack, getting lucky on one counter and making it stand up. Thought Man City's best bet was finding Sterling up the wing but they never made it happen. 

Good final, good tournament, once it gets to the quarters it's all bad ass squads.