Real Madrid vs. Manchester City: Team News, Preview, Live Stream, TV Info

Real Madrid vs. Manchester City: Yeah that one. It’s still on, remember?

It speaks of the magnitude of what has transpired in world football this week that the second leg of Madrid and City’s semi-final clash in the UEFA Champions League at the Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday night has almost felt like an afterthought in recent days.  

On Monday, we were propelled into a footballing landscape in which Leicester City are now Premier League title winners, and in which everything suddenly looks very different from what we’ve known.

And everyone is transfixed. 

In England, of course, Leicester is the sole focus, with Manchester City’s looming opportunity barely registering, but elsewhere it’s similar.

In Italy, both Gazzetta dello Sport and Corriere dello Sport ran with “King Claudio” with their main headlines on Tuesday. On the same day in Spain, Leicester made the covers of Sport, AS, and Marca—”¡OLEicester! said the latter—while Mundo Deportivo made Leicester its feature story.

Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane was even asked about Claudio Ranieri’s side in his pre-match press conference on Tuesday, while AS posted a video of passionate Madridista Tomas Roncero attempting to pronounce the name of the new English champions (it’s a particularly difficult one for Spaniards).

“Leychester,” he said. 

It’s historic and it’s extraordinary, and as a result, never before has a Champions League semi-final week ever felt so secondary.

So can Europe’s grandest competition grab back some of the limelight? 

You suspect it might with these two.

After a tense and cagey 0-0 draw in last week’s first leg at the Etihad Stadium, it’s difficult to envisage a similar affair unfolding again given the nature of these sides. Madrid, after all, are explosive but flawed; City are remarkably similar. Indeed, these are outfits that are talent-reliant, Jekyll and Hyde, capable of the extraordinary and the ridiculous. 

Buckle up, then, this …

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