To the despair of their fans, sometimes Guardiola’s City plays football like no other English team does.

City tries to take possession of the ball. He manipulates and hides it, and his game, like the leisurely British drizzle, tries to penetrate whoever gets ahead of him, in this case a timid and scared Leipzig in the first half that has never achieved great things in Europe, we’ll see what happens in this course.

So deep is the closet of the billionaire City that he aspires to manage even without De Bruyne and Laporte, two absences that, after all, ended up becoming essential. Bernardo Silva took a few steps back to help build from behind. During the first three quarters of an hour, Ruben Dias, in the defense axis, did not have excessive crises.

Leipzig did not appear until the second half, when it was already seen with water around its neck.

Before, in the first period, the Germans had been maintaining the type, more or less, until the edge of the half hour.

Until then, City had cooked basmati rice. If you had to grope and grope, you groped. At times, the touching was provocative: Walker and Akanji would pass each other and look at each other, and not move forward. Grealish likes those things too.

Haland is desperate.

City played and played during the first period, and Leipzig wanted to imitate them when they could, but that didn’t work out for them, and that’s why the Germans got into trouble. A defensive error when leaving the ball caused City to rush: Grealish, Gündogan and Mahrez combined and the last one opened the scoring (27).

In reality, City did little else. Haland only received one proper ball, only one in the entire game, already in the 67th minute, but as soon as he started, he opened a meter for Gvardiol.

The buffalo attack lasted a few tenths of a second.

Then Haland shut down.

So little offensive arsenal was insufficient to scare Leipzig. Far from being scared, the Germans roused themselves. They had been hanging around Ederson’s frame for a while now, and the Brazilian goalkeeper was unlucky three minutes later: he fell asleep at the start and swallowed Gvardiol’s shot.

Suddenly, City found themselves where they did not want to be: with the ball divided, against a grown rival and with Haland disconnected. Nkunku and Timo Werner understood each other in the left lane and that’s where they looked for the tickles of City. Clearly scared, the English closed the game just as they had started it: trying to play

If it had been handball, they would have been marked passive.

RB Leipzig: Blaswich, Klostermann (Henrichs, 46), Orban, Gvardiol, Halstenberg (Room, 89), Laimer, Schlager (Haidara, 82); Szoboszlai, Forsberg (Nkunku, 66), Werner and André Silva (Poulsen, 82).

Manchester City: Ederson, Walker, Akanji, Ruben Dias, Aké, Rodrigo, Bernardo Silva; Mahrez, Gundogan, Grealish and Haaland.

Goals: 0-1, m.27: Mahrez. 1-1, m.70: Gvardiol.

Referee: Serdar Gözübüyü (Netherlands). He admonished Henrichs.

Incidents: first leg of the round of 16 of the Champions League played at the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig.