Schalke v Manchester City: Champions League last 16, first leg – live! | Soccer

32 min: Bernardo Silva passes the ball to Sterling at the edge of the Schalke area. Sterling tries to wrap a sneaky bottom in the lower corner but is stuck.

30 minutes: It's an encouraging time for Schalke. Bentaleb begins to evoke a bit of midfield and McKennie seems to be able to upset Laporte if he had more opportunities to show up for him. But no goal goal yet to speak from the hosts.

28 min: Schalke builds promisingly, creating a crossing opportunity for Mendyl quite left. He is diverted for a corner. "If this continues, the local team could just as easily change their name and become Schalke 0-4," jokes Peter Oh. "Have fans of the city launched a song" Are you Chelsea disguised ?! "

25 minUth shoots Schalke's first shot, a reasonable long-range effort that deviates a few meters from the post.

24 min: Schalke tries to calm himself by chaining the passes. But they lose him again in a dangerous position. Sterling and David Silva try to sneak in and mix.

22 min: Schalke tries to pull himself together to answer this ridiculous concession. They are advancing in numbers, but in a way that makes them even more vulnerable to City, who will be confident of inflicting more damage to the pawn.

The confusion in Schalke's defense allows City to open the scoring in the simplest of styles! The players seemed to think that the game should have stopped because Uth fell under Laporte's aerial challenge at the end of the field. But they did not take out the ball, they just caressed it. City cleared Sane from the penalty area and David Silva then put the ball against Aguero, who opened the net to six yards!

16 min: De Bruyne unloads one at 15 meters. The connection was beautiful and the ball went almost in the air … but directly in the arms of the keeper.

15 minutes: After surviving the attack on City, Schalke begins to assert a little. Caligiuri, on the other hand, seems much more comfortable going from the front.

14 min: Laporte is trying to push a long ball out of the game, but McKennie is faster than he thought and runs around him to hit the ball at the end of the wire. Laporte goes down to suggest that he was withdrawn by the American, and the referee falls for the oldest tour of the book.

13 min: Guadiola continues to shout orders from the sideline. It looks like the players have to go through even more tempo to further destabilize the packed defense of the home team.

12 min: Nastastic rushes in front of a shot from 20 meters Aguero, deflecting the ball for a corner. It is the incessant pressure of the visitors.

11 min: Aguero receives the ball at the edge of the area with his back to goal and eight opponents between him and the net. He returns the ball to David Silva and City ends up cheating wide for Sterling on the left. This time the cross is inaccurate.

9 min: Schalke almost got into the City! Bentaled won the ball in midfield and threw an enthusiastic counter-center, but the center left was deflected out of the game by Uth before even reaching the penalty area.

7 min: Caligiui is not a natural defender, he is fighting Sterling, who beats him every time he faces him so far. Except this last time, because Caligirui was fouling it. The city works on the freekick obtained well before the centers Bernardo Silva for Aguero. A beautiful Argentinian head at eight meters forces the goalies to head over the bar for another bend.

5 minSterling and David Silva combine smoothly on the left before the old man tries to spot Aguero with a low pass in the middle. Nastasic shoots him for a corner.

4 min: Fahrmann leaves his line and slides to the feet of Aguero to question.

3 min: The city has already taken up residence in half of Schalke. You have the impression that it will be the model for the rest of the game. Uth is alone in front of Schalke and the ball has not been nearing him yet.

2 min: In commenting on BT, Martin Keown said we should "expect a miracle from City". De Bruyne has everything to meet all expectations, sending a superb pass in depth to Aguero, who can not control the surface.

As teams shake hands before the game, it's clear that Schalke is much bigger than City. No wonder Guardiola mentioned that their physics and their centerpieces were among the most dangerous threats.

There is a vertiginous atmosphere in the stadium, where all these adorable tricks of the German terrain are mixed: loud vocals, huge cartoons on flags and supporters with glasses of foaming beer and denim jackets covered with coins at the end of the day. back.

He warns about Schalke's "physical quality, quality, centerpieces" and says, "If you let them run, it's hard to control them … but we'll try to impose our good things."

Asked about the possibility of winning trophies this season and perhaps four of them, he replied: "This kind of question will be accepted in May. But in January and February, it's silly. Because in a week, you can lose everything. We are in a good position but three consecutive bad results and … "

The director of Schalke, Domenico Tedesco, was born in 1985. He is three days younger than Luka Modric. He has never known any world in which Duran Duran figures at the top of the UK charts and Aston Villa as King of Europe.

None of Schalke's starters have a yellow card for this match. For City, the next three will miss the second if they book here: Fernandinho, Otamendi, Aguero. But they would be better off not getting caught deliberately if they have a decisive lead in the first round, otherwise they would be faced with a suspension similar to last year 's one in Carvajal, Real Madrid. or may not have escaped the attention of dear old Sergio Ramos.

It seems that Schalke is deploying a defense of five players, while the formation of City suggests that Guardiola uses Fernandinho for central defense – or rather as a central defender who can become an additional midfielder if City wants to play a big shot. The Brazilian played this role well against Arsenal earlier this season. Laporte, rather than Zinchenko, will probably be on the left-back. Leroy Sané, meanwhile, is parked on the bench on his return to the club where he began his career.

Schalke 04: Fahrmann; Caligiuri, Bruma, Sané, Nastasic, Oczipka; Serdar, Bentaleb, McKennie; Uth, Mendyl

Subs: Nübel, Rudy, Matondo, Kutucu, Burgstaller, Harit

Man City: Ederson; Walker, Fernandinho, Otamendi, Laporte; Gundogan, De Bruyne, D Silva; B Silva, Aguero, Sterling

Subs: Muric, Danilo, Kompany, Sané, Mahrez, Zinchenko, Foden

Arbitrator: C Del Cerro Grande (Spain)

Are your hands in the air if the first things that come to mind when you plan to go to Schalke are the glory days of Stephen Ireland and Benjani Mwaruwari? I thought so. Well, Pep Guardiola's men will want to recreate the success that these two heroes made possible more than a decade ago, when City went to Gelsenkirchen and came back with a 2-0 win. That said, and all claims of humility aside, 2-0 is probably the minimum that the city should be looking for today against a team that is obviously inferior to it and in a ugly form, 14^th in the Bundesliga despite a slight recovery since the beginning of the year.

Cities do not have their own problems – John Stones, Gabriel Jesus, Fabian Delph and Benjamin Mendy have not been able to travel – but they have enough resources to cope and get to Germany in a form that makes perfect reasonable to speak of a quadruple. Pep Guardiola's goal will be for his team to do what they did at this stage of last season, when they gagged Basel 4-0 in the first leg to make them forget the second game. And you can be sure that Leroy Sané and Ilkay Gundogan will be particularly eager to impress their return.

But football is not so simple, right? Schalke, finalist of the Bundesliga last season, will do everything possible to challenge the odds. And City does not know exactly what is happening in the European competition. And there remains a suspicion to which they can be found, and also that they sometimes become hypnotized by their own rhythmic passages. Smart players will support an energetic outward win, but smart people will keep their money in their pockets and just watch the show. Action ahoy!