Li Mingyu's free kick from 40 meters away brought out the essence of Knuckleball to the fullest.
When a general high-altitude ball falls, its landing point is very clear, and the speed is not too fast. Even an ordinary goalkeeper can accurately judge the landing point of the football.
But Knuckleball is different. The power of the feet gives the football full rotation, allowing it to completely release its speed at the highest point and start to fall in an unpredictable arc.
When it fell, it was just like the leaves blown down by the autumn wind. There was no pattern, the landing point was very strange, and the speed was extremely fast.
The goalkeeper of the Bayern Munich team, Neuer, was confused by the football in the air, causing him to ignore the position of his feet. He finally judged the right direction, but his feet had already entered the goal line.
2:1, Manchester City overtook the score.
After taking the lead, Manchester City played more conservatively. Except for Gabriel Jesus who was at the front, everyone else returned to their own half and participated in the defense.
The players of the Bayern Munich team did not expect that the recovery of Manchester City would be so resolute. Facing an iron-clad defense line, the Bayern Munich team was somewhat helpless.
Lewandowski, known as the "World's First Striker", has already regressed greatly this season.
But in World Cup's game, Lewandowski scored six goals by himself. However, he met the popular Argentina National Team in the quarter-finals and lost to Messi.
After returning to the league, Lewandowski's performance became sluggish again.
After returning from World Cup, the former the Best FIFA Men's Player has fallen into a goal drought for more than a month.
In today's game, Lewandowski had two shots in the first half, but none of them could hit the goal frame. It seemed that his condition was still very sluggish.
The 34-year-old Lewandowski still has one and a half years of contract with Bayern Munich. However, he has decided to retire after the contract ends.
As Lewandowski, he is already the greatest player in Poland history.
Lewandowski is a late-blooming star. When he signed Bayern Munich, he was already 26 years old.
The miracle of 5 goals in 9 minutes made the world remember this super Lewandowski.
On October 15, 2015, in the sixth round of the 2015-2016 season Bundesliga Bayern Munich reversed Wolfsburg 5-1 at home. In the second half, Lewandowski came on as a substitute. Unexpectedly, a legendary scene appeared.
From the 51st to the 60th minute, Lewandowski scored 5 goals in a row.
This result has been officially confirmed and broke as many as 4 Guinness World Records at the same time.
These four records are the fastest hat trick, the fastest four goals, the fastest five goals, and five goals as a substitute.
It only took Lewandowski 198 seconds to perform a hat trick, 7 minutes to score 4 goals, and 9 minutes to score 5 goals, setting the fastest record for Europe Top Five Leagues.
And from that day on, Lewandowski seemed to have opened up the two channels of Ren and Du, and scoring goals was as easy as picking something out of a bag.
In 2020, Lewandowski defeated Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and won the Best Men's Football Player of the Year award from FIFA, also known as the Best FIFA Men's Player.
At that moment, Lewandowski was called "the first striker in the world", and he truly deserved the title of the best forward in the world.
The Lewandowski of that year was so terrifying.
Two years have passed, and time is not forgiving.
Shi Yifeng back then, although he still maintains his dominance in Bundesliga, currently Lewandowski is still ranked first in the scorer list, and may become the third consecutive Bundesliga Golden Boot.
However, the consecutive month of goal drought also shows the current fatigue of Lewandowski.
Lewandowski was not active in running in the frontcourt today, and his physical condition did not look very good.
Even Manchester City's defense became lax against Lewandowski's defense.
The first half required three minutes of stoppage time. Manchester City and even Gabriel Jesus had already defended in front of their own penalty area.
Bayern Munich controlled the ball near the midfield. At the last moment, they wanted to squeeze the time to the last moment before attacking.
Even if it fails, Manchester City cannot be allowed to launch a final counterattack.
A minute passed.
Manchester City If the tiger doesn't get out of the hole, you can just tip over in the midfield. Anyway, I'm in the lead now. If you have the ability, you can tip over until the end of the game!
Two minutes passed.
Bayern Munich starts to push the ball forward.
Seeing that Bayern Munich has a tendency to attack, Manchester City's defensive intensity increased.
Li Mingyu directs the defensive positions of his teammates to prevent them from losing their position and engage in small-scale encirclement.
Muller, Germany National Team is one of the tallest frontcourt players. He can play all positions in the frontcourt. His left and right feet are very balanced and he has good interposition awareness. He is the core of the frontcourt of the Bayern Munich team.
Muller took the ball in front of Manchester City's penalty area. Manchester City's defense all looked at him, blocking all routes he could break through and pass.
Faced with this situation, Muller can only choose to pass horizontally.
Lewandowski is not the kind of center who likes to wait for opportunities in the penalty area. He likes to go outside the penalty area to receive the ball and support, or break into the penalty area, or directly hit the goal outside the penalty area.
Just like this year's World Cup, three of Lewandowski's six goals were scored outside the penalty area.
Muller crosses the ball, Lewandowski pulls out and leans sideways against Manchester City's centre-back Laporte.
There was not much time left in the first half of stoppage time.
The referee has been looking at the time on his watch and has put the whistle in his mouth. He is waiting for Bayern Munich's attack to end and he will blow the whistle to end the game.
Lewandowski leaned against Laporte and pushed Laporte hard with his arm. Laporte was not prepared for the movement of Lewandowski's upper body. He leaned back slightly due to the push.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Lewandowski turned half-turn and fired a powerful volley, hoping to take advantage of the last moment to attempt a shot.
It has to be said that "Shi Yifeng" is really lucky. When the ball was hit, Lewandowski knew that the ball was not played well. It was weak and weak, and the angle was very correct.
But suddenly a foot stuck out from the crowd and touched the football.
The football, which was originally rolling towards the center, had an obvious trajectory change and rolled towards the left side of the goal.
Goalkeeper Ederson originally moved from that side. This time, he watched the football roll in the opposite direction to him, and immediately forced his center of gravity to return. Then, he staggered and ran over, and flew out, but he was unable to touch the football.
2:2, at the last moment of first half stoppage time, Bayern Munich equalized the score.
Who is this player who helped Bayern Munich equalize the score?
In the crowd, Sterling was holding his head in shock. The kick just now was caused by him.
Originally, he wanted to clear the ball, but who knew, by some strange combination of circumstances, he actually sent the ball into his own goal.
The referee blew the whistle to end the first half.
With Sterling's own goal, the players of the Bayern Munich team returned to the locker room with a smile.
A goal behind and a draw will cause huge changes in the midfield tactical arrangements for the Bayern Munich team.
The pursuit battle turned into an evenly matched positional battle.
Sure enough, after the start of the second half, Bayern Munich's playing style became more stable.
Guardiola nodded meaningfully when he saw this scene.
This was completely within his expectation, so during the halftime break, he especially emphasized that at the beginning of the second half, he must not rush forward and stabilize the situation.
This is the home court of Bayern Munich. A draw is very beneficial to Manchester City.
The advantage of two away goals allows them to deal with the opponent calmly.
It is said that by next season, there will be a reform in the competition between Champions League and UEFA Europa League.
It means abolishing the away goals rule.
In the European competition next season, whether it is the qualifying round, the group stage or the knockout round, if the two sides are tied after two rounds in the qualifying round or the knockout round, a thirty-minute overtime will be played directly.
In fact, this rule change is still very beneficial to wealthy families.
Because there are many games in which the weak beat the strong, the weak team sets up a bus at their home court, trying to make the opponent score less or even no goals. When they get to the home court of the rich, they will often attack, because an away goal is equivalent to 1.5 goals.
However, this rule seems a bit cruel to those small clubs that want to go further.
However, this is also a targeted reform of UEFA.
The threat of European Super League made UEFA finally take a powerful measure against the wealthy team.
This rule can win the support of wealthy teams for UEFA.
You know, now European Super League is just suspended, not cancelled.
In other words, European Super League can be started at any time, as long as Florentino can mobilize more teams.
Sure enough, after ten minutes of testing between the two sides, Bayern Munich's players couldn't help but start to press on.
The players of Manchester City were very smart and did not get entangled with Bayern Munich for one city and one pool. Instead, they continued to retreat, luring the Bayern Munich team to press higher.
The fans at the scene cheered excitedly when they saw that Manchester City was so suppressed that he was "unable to fight back."
But only the Bayern Munich players and their head coach know.
If there is a problem with their offense this time and the opponent hits a fast break, they may be the unlucky ones next.