The Champions League dream is over for another season after Manchester City were pummelled into submission by a dominant Kylian Mbappe display for Real Madrid.
City fell behind on the night when Mbappe lobbed the ball over Ederson after just four minutes to make a seemingly impossible task pretty much unassailable.
Mbappe scored again before half-time and then rounded off his hat-trick just after the hour mark, with a first City strike for Nico Gonzalez proving nothing more than scant consolation.
Mbappe made a mockery of Josko Gvardiol during the game. The Frenchman was in fine form and now it’s a race to finish in the top four and an FA Cup tilt to look forward to for Pep Guardiola.
Far too many City players underperformed against Real Madrid. It was a performance that didn’t typify everything the Citizens have been over the years under Guardiola and the City head coach got plenty of things wrong.
Micah Richards felt sorry for Manchester City player
This defeat to Real Madrid proved to be a real baptism of fire for new signing Abdukodir Khusanov. He was tasked with playing out of position as a right-back and it royally backfired.
The Uzbekistan international who signed from Lens is normally a central defender. He’s made three previous appearances for City and is still trying to settle at the football club since his arrival.
Richard was on punditry duty for CBS Sports last night and he expressed sympathy for Khusanov and also believes that Guardiola should have kept Kyle Walker for occasions like last night.
He said on air: “Yeah, I felt a bit sorry for Khusanov today. He’s had a difficult start to his Manchester City career. Obviously, he’s a centre-half, but he was at right-back tonight against Vinicius, and then Mbappe and then Rodrygo and then Bellingham comes in. It’s very difficult to come into this game.
“I look back to Kyle Walker, he wasn’t having the best season, but his experience, allowing him to go to Milan at this part of the season. Looking at playing a 20-year-old at right-back in one of the biggest games of Man City’s season.”
Abdukodir Khusanov stats vs Real Madrid
At 20-years-old, Khusanov has clearly been added to the City ranks with one eye on the future and it might take him a few months to truly settle.
Coming from France is never easy with the league considerably weaker than the Premier League and throwing him in last night against Real Madrid offered him a thankless task.
| Abdukodir Khusanov stats vs Real Madrid | Total |
| Minutes | 90 |
| Tackles | 1 |
| Clearances | 3 |
| Pass Accuracy | 93% |
| Who Scored Rating | 6.47 |
Khusanov has been signed for a reason though and one bad performance certainly shouldn’t see him written off just yet – especially considering the opposition.
The youngster will learn from this whole experience of coming up against one of Europe’s best teams and with John Stones going off injured last night, perhaps Khusanov will soon get a chance as a centre-back.
