Chelsea football club defeated Manchester City 1-0 to win their second UEFA Champions League title in 9 years. The London club and the Manchester side played a “chess game” in the first half as expected until Kai Havertz broke the deadlock in the 42nd minute.
After 45 minutes of an intense game, the two teams went into the locker room with no uncertainty of how the night would end. The fans of both teams on the stands were not sure whether it would be a repeat of history or a creation of a new one.
The second half commenced with Manchester City showing strong determination to get back into the game. The intensity of the game became so much that the club ended up losing their captain, Kevin De Bruyne to a concussion injury.
Recall that Chelsea’s defender, Thiago Silva also had to leave the game in the first half due to an injury to his knee which means that the game didn’t go perfectly as planned for both teams.
At the end of the 90 minutes of regular time, the lone goal Kai Havertz scored in the first half of the Champions League game became the only difference between the two Premier League teams and it was enough to deny Manchester City the opportunity of winning their first UEFA Champions League title.
As it stands, Thomas Tuchel has confirmed his technical superiority over the coach of Manchester City, Pep Guardiola, by defeating him for the third time in 6 weeks. Recall that the German tactician who became the coach of Chelsea in January 2021 ended Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City run in the FA Cup, in the semi-final stage of the competition.
A few weeks later, Thomas Tuchel led Chelsea to defeat Manchester City in the Premier League to make it a second successive win in the 2020-2021 season.
He crowned it all by doing the same thing in the UEFA Champions League final played at the Estadio do Dragao in Porto, Portugal, on May 29.
With the loss tonight, Pep Guardiola has now failed to win the UEFA Champions League title for Manchester City in five attempts, this season being the farthest he has taken the team in the competition.
In the previous four seasons, the best Pep Guardiola was able to get for Manchester City was a quarter-final finish. Hence, the reigning Premier League champions would take it as a fair 2020-2021 campaign.
On the other hand, Thomas Tuchel used tonight to make a big statement that he is one of the big managers in European football. Recall that he took Paris Saint Germain to the final of the competition last season but lost it to Bayern Munich.
When PSG sacked him and was appointed by Chelsea, he was able to lead the London club to the final making him the first coach in the history of football to lead two different clubs to a successive Champions League final.
Champions of Europe. As you were. NG x pic.twitter.com/bbE3kJ1Aah
— Champions of Europe 🏆 (@ChelseaFC) May 29, 2021
One response to “Chelsea beat Manchester City to win 2020-2021 UEFA Champions League”
[…] Chelsea are the defending champions, and despite the fact that some huge names like Barcelona, AC Milan, and Borussia Dortmund fell at the first hurdle, there are still more realistic contenders this time around than in any prior edition of the league. […]