The striker was the absolute protagonist in the 3-0 with which Guardiola’s team extinguished the dreams of the Championship club. A player hasn’t scored three goals in a semi-final since 1958
Riyad Mahrez brings Manchester City back to the FA Cup final after 4 years, debunking the semi-final taboo against which Guardiola’s team had crashed in the last three seasons with a hat-trick. It is his flashes of class that extinguish the dream of Sheffield United (beaten 3-0), which in a year in which it is about to win a return to the Premier League has given itself a semi-final at Wembley of that cup which it won for the last time in 1925. Too much difference in talent between the two teams to think that it wasn’t City who won the final on 3 June against the winners of Brighton-Manchester United. Sheffield United defended themselves, even well in the first half when they only let themselves in for an avoidable penalty, but collapsed in the second half in the 5th minute. Feeding the dream treble of City, who reached the FA Cup final having scored 17 goals in 5 games without conceding a single one.
the keys to the city
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Mahrez is the hero of the party in the blue portion of Wembley, packed with a crowd of 69,603. The Algerian is unlikely to miss a game that counts, but this time he exaggerated, scoring the first hat-trick ever in the cup semi-final at the symbolic stadium of English football and the first at this stage of the competition since 1958. His penalty in the 43rd minute (good Bernardo Silva to earn it, unfortunate Jebbison to mow down the Portuguese in the heart of the area, with the wall of the Blades around) made the task of the City easier, whose listless attacks up to that moment had been canceled without too much difficulty by the opposing defensive wall . The 2-0 is what really makes Mahrez the best on the pitch: stolen bald in midfield from Lowe in disengagement, intelligence to see a hole between Robinson and Egan by slipping into it as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Apart from Mahrez, it was certainly not a great game for City, with many changes (De Bruyne on the bench for 90′) and an opponent that was certainly not stimulating like Bayern faced on Wednesday in the second leg of the Champions League quarter-finals and Arsenal who he arrives on Wednesday at the Etihad in the match that is probably worth the Premier. Mahrez’s feats made it unforgettable. Just as the ride of Sheffield United remains unforgettable, a team that wrote the history of this competition in the first half of the 20th century (this was its 15th semi-final, the 6th since 1945 onwards) and which is now waiting to celebrate the return to Premier to try again.
the match
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After Ndiaye whipped up Ortega’s sensational chance in the second minute, Sheffield United put up a wall which City, uncharacteristically inaccurate, crashed into despite attacking with a 5-man line plus 3-man support immediately behind. The block fell in the 43rd minute, with a penalty that Mahrez (and not Haaland, who had made a mistake on Wednesday in the Champions League) transformed by displacing Foderingham. The script does not change at the beginning of the second half and then Mahrez thinks about changing things again: in the 61st minute he uproots a ball in the middle of the pitch from Robinson and starts in progression, slipping like a blade into the Blades defense and scoring a splendid 2- 0. Five minutes later Mahrez makes the trio, picking up a nice assist from Grealish in the center of the area. It is the goal that puts the match on ice and City to fight for the cup.
April 22, 2023 (change April 22, 2023 | 19:55)
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