Champions League: Manchester City vs RB Leipzig

As of: November 28, 2023 11:26 p.m

RB Leipzig missed a point in the Champions League against Manchester City – even the new tactics cannot prevent the next bankruptcy.

The big surprise was in the air for RB Leipzig: In the end, the 2:3 (2:0) win at Manchester City was not enough to give them a sense of success. Lois Openda gave coach Marco Rose’s team the lead in the Champions League group game with two goals in the first half. Erling Haaland, Phil Foden and Julián Álvarez turned the game in favor of the hosts in the second half.

Nevertheless: Given that Leipzig’s first two guest games at the City Stadium were lessons, this was a significantly improved result: RB previously lost resoundingly 3:6 and 0:7. Both teams qualified for the round of 16 before the game even started.

“It’s not easy here at any stage,” said RB keeper Janis Blaswich: “After the 2-1 win, the stadium woke up again, but before that we had actually silenced them quite well.”

Leipzig counterattack

The Saxons started with a defensive 5-4-1 formation that was extremely unusual for Leipzig – with which coach Rose wanted to ensure that his team played compactly against the strong English and did not offer as many spaces as in the previous two games in Manchester.

And this unusual approach should pay off. The “Skyblues” had a hard time in the build-up game and hardly found any gaps in Leipzig’s defensive lines. And they always played with the risk of running into a counterattack.

Openda prevails twice

And this was exactly the scenario that the Leipzig team had relied on after 13 minutes: goalkeeper Blaswich’s long shot over the entire Manchester team, Lois Openda used his speed and made it 1-0 for the guests.

As a result, the “Citizens” increased the tempo and thus the pressure on the Leipzig goal. However, the final attempts were too imprecise, also because star attacker Erling Haaland hadn’t had his best day up to that point.

And it was precisely in this pressure phase that Leipzig struck again. Once again the lightning-fast Openda escaped from the City defense, cleverly let defender Josko Gvardiol get out and converted for a 2-0 lead (33′). The big surprise now seemed possible.

Haaland scores the next goal

The Rose team tried to maintain this defensive compactness in the second half. But then Haaland showed why he is currently considered the best striker in the world. The Norwegian started deep, received the ball precisely and converted it coldly from twelve meters to make it 1-2 (54th).

However, the Leipzig team did not let this setback throw them off course, they maintained their concentration and defended themselves as best they could. But Manchester did everything they could to score more goals.

Phil Foden could no longer stop the RB defense after 70 minutes. The offensive player converted from 13 meters to make it 2-2. And when everyone involved was slowly getting used to the draw, Álvarez (87th) finished from eight meters centrally in front of the Leipzig goal and turned the game into a 3-2 victory for coach Pep Guardiola’s team.