It may be many years before City add a Champions League title to the English championship they won last May but at least their recovery in this Group D fixture was encouraging.
Only by making a succession of good decisions can a manager cover up an initial howler. Everything Roberto Mancini did to put right his error in starting with a back three who were torn apart added to the team's momentum, with City dominating the second period and equalising with a Sergio Agüero penalty after Alvaro Arbeloa had been sent off. Better not to make major tactical mistakes in the first place, but at least City found their inner warrior when this European campaign was sliding into ignominy.
"We are Man City, we'll fight to the end," the home fans sang. You want more than that for what Sheikh Mansour has spent on players and infrastructure here. By the end they could reasonably say there was no vast quality gap between them and the ancient empire of Madrid. Too little, though, too late.
Tactics that work against inferior opposition can look calamitous against superior teams, and City's decision to start with a back three and wing-backs will go down as one of the least successful gambles of Mancini's time. Most attackers can be snuffed out in this way but not Ronaldo and Karim Benzema when they see space and sense vulnerability all around.
In the movements of a rear five under stress you see the hesitation of a group unsure about who is meant to perform which task. For Real's opening goal in the 10th minute Maicon watched Benzema dart clear to the far post to meet an Angel di Maria cross. You could see Maicon thinking: is this my job, or is it down to one of the three centre-backs?
While City's defenders were working out the demarcation lines Mourinho's men were ripping them to confetti. Ronaldo saw a weakness down Maicon's side and Benzema bore down on Vincent Kompany, who looks slower and hesitant this year. The most imperious centre-back in the Premier League in City's first championship-winning season for 44 years, Kompany frequently now seems ponderous. He no longer controls his space with the same authority, though he did win one sprint with Ronaldo on 70 minutes.
So after an embarrassing start City recovered their poise to subdue Real's attacking threat and show a few moves of their own. But yet again there was a sense of England's champions clinging on in Champions League competition.
Borussia Dortmund and Ajax also stretched City's European credentials. To repeat a point made during the Ajax game here, City look built to smother and pummel Premier League opposition rather than play pass-and-move against Europe's best ball-retaining teams.
Undeniably Mancini's continental credibility is on the line after his doomed attempts to convert Inter Milan from Italian champions to European rulers. In a combined XI, Real would have won the selection battle perhaps 8-3, with only Agüero, Yaya Touré and David Silva demanding inclusion. That sobering realisation showed up the true cost of firing a club from a cannon onto the territory occupied by Real and Barcelona. At the interval, Mancini decided he needed a deep midfielder to help his back four and release Touré to maraud. Off went Alexsandr Kolarov and on came Javi Garcia.
With Arbeloa dismissed for a second cautionable offence, Madrid clung to the point that could consign City to the Europa League, with its energy-sapping trips. "In this group we knew from the beginning a big team would be out," Mourinho said. Then he laughed demonically: "If it was Real Madrid the press wouldn't let me return to Madrid." Mancini has a bit more wriggle room but the scale of the failure still hurts and greatly weakens his position.
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