Real Madrid 1 - Manchester City 0. Real advances to another Spanish UCL Final

The moment I saw that Clichy was starting in the leftwing of Manchester City I realized that Manuel Pellegrini was trying to play his defensive cards.

With a 0-0 draw on the first leg played in Manchester, City only needed one goal to complicate Real Madrid's life. Yet, the chilean coach clearly was more concerned about Real Madrid not scoring.

Ronaldo himself has scored 17 goals in the UCL this season, and Real Madrid sits in third position of La Liga with an astonishing 105 goals for, the highest in the competition. That means that Real Madrid WILL score. It will be a matter of minutes, but its quite rare that Zidane's team concedes a clean sheet to whoever they are playing with.

A more realistic approach would have been to assume that Madrid would score, and try to complicate their lives by scoring as many goals as possible, at least one.

Lets say that City scores first. With 0-1 anxiety will appear in the Bernabeu and maybe then Manchester City will have a chance.

Even though the first ten minutes the English team had control of the ball, Modric and Isco started overpowering Yaya Toure and Fernandinho in the midfield. Madrid gained control of the ball and Manchester were just hanging on there.

Navas was playing extra deep to keep Marcelo out of attacking positions (nice move by Pellegrini), but the danger was coming from the right side of Real Madrid's attack. De Bruyne's defensive effort is imaginary, since he does not really bring anything to the table in that matter. With Marcelo deep back taking care of Navas, Real Madrid played more through the right side, where Carvajal had no problem getting rid of De Bruyne every single chance.

After 20 minutes, one of those plays ended up with a nice pass from Carvajal to Bale, a shot from the welsch and the ball in Hart's net after deflecting in a defender. 1-0 for Real Madrid.

Manchester City shot 3 times on goal, none of them on target. Keylor Navas had a very pleasant afternoon, and the few chances that he had to go to work, he was extremely secure. He will not make a humongous save to save the day like Casillas used to do, but he will not make any mistakes when it is his turn to shine.

In order to help Marcelo, Zidane got Jese to play a bit more towards the left side to prevent the City getting an easy start of the play there and looking for Navas.

Time was passing and Manchester City did not create any chances (I am not suprised when your midfield is pure muscle and 0 creativity) so Pellegrini finally put some of the talent that he had in the bench in the pitch, getting Sterling and Kelechi Iheanacho on. Sterling brought a bit of something through the left side, but was never able to create real chances.

Real Madrid advances to the final too easily to face Atletico de Madrid, in a match that will be much more complicated than this semifinal.

We will have the same final than in 2014, when a late header by Ramos prevented Atletico de Madrid from winning their first ever UCL. 

One thing is for sure: Simeone will not make the game as easy as Pellegrini did today. It will be a very enjoyable battle.