Champions League Takeaway: Manchester Mentality Monsters, Inter’s Italian Job, Rodrygo Rises for Real & Milan’s Nucleão Option

Hello Rank Squad!

It’s time for the Champions League Takeaway – an immediate review of everything that went down in the Champions League this week as we had the second legs of the quarter finals and locked in our final four. Every matchweek, we’re going to be ranking the three key takeaways from each of the games played that week, and looking at the games through that Ranks FC lens, to give you a sense of everything that we learned from each game.

We start with City’s 1-1 draw in Munich which saw them progress comfortably after last week’s massacre in Manchester. We discuss the mentality change for City ahead of another semi-final, the impressive performance of Kingsley Coman, and Bayern’s gamble not paying off. Then, we’re off to Milan to discuss what looked like a 3-3 classic between Inter and Benfica, but was actually less so. That said, Inter will be over the moon – we talk the experience of Inter’s lineup, the positives that Benfica can take out of this and the fanbase’s joy at Inter’s homegrown Italian core.

Then in Part 2, we head back to London to discuss Real Madrid’s thoroughly professional job dispatching an out-of-sorts Chelsea. There’s some hope for Blues fans, in Lampard’s tactics actually suiting this game quite well, but it’s a Rodrygo love-in by the end as one of Real’s Brazilian starboys takes another opportunity to step out of the shadows and into the spotlight, in a competition he loves so much. We finish with the all-Italian affair between Milan and Napoli, which the Rossoneri edged; talking through Milan’s Rafael Leão’s one-man counter-attack, Napoli not needing to be too downhearted, and a defensive display which was worthy of some of Milan’s legendary back lines.

It’s Ranks!

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