The Foxes were the best English team in the Premier League last year, and apparently they’re the best English team in the Champions League this season. With Manchester City’s 3-1 loss to Monaco today, Leicester fucking City are the final representatives in Europe’s top competition from the Best League in the World™.
Monaco really fucked Man City up today. They are a preposterously young and athletic team, and they utilized their speed and strength advantage over City by running right over them. It only took 30 minutes for the Ligue 1 club to completely erase the two-goal aggregate lead City took into the match, and Monaco did so in style during a rampant first half.
Kylian Mbappé, an 18-year-old who’s quickly become one of the most fearsome and desired young forwards in the world this season, got the party started with a goal in the 8th minute. He more than anyone in the squad best embodies Monaco’s blistering speed, their strength on the ball, and their determination to bomb forward with abandon.
In the 29th minute, rumored City transfer target Fabinho got Monaco’s second, finishing a cutback not too dissimilar to Mbappé’s earlier strike.
Still, City didn’t appear to be in too bad a position. As long as they scored—something that looked increasingly inevitable after Pep Guardiola’s team came out looking much more assured and threatening in the second half—City would still be in control since all they had to do was lose by at most a one-goal deficit.
Sergio Agüero fluffed a few chances during City’s second-half period of ascendency, but the goal City deserved eventually did come through Leroy Sané:
As long as City could maintain that 2-1 scoreline for the final 20 minutes of the match, they’d sneak their way into the quarterfinals. This proved too much to ask:
And thus we find ourselves in a world where Leicester City are the only Premier League team remaining in the Champions League. Monaco have had an unbelievable season as probably Europe’s scariest attacking outfit, and were the better team between these two for the majority of both legs of the tie. They deserved to go through, and there’s no reason why they can’t continue their assault even deeper into the competition.
From a selfish point of view, though, the City loss kind of sucks. By the time you’ve finished reading this, there will already be a dozen gleeful “More Like FRAUDiola!!!!” columns cluttering the pages of the English press.
This is a somewhat strange place to be. On one hand, Guardiola definitely deserves criticism for not being able to hold on to a commanding lead after the first leg, and the recurring defensive struggles of this group are a problem. (More than anything, Guardiola and the City board should be pilloried for their baffling transfer strategy that saw them spend tons of money on positions of strength and very little on obvious areas of need.)
On the other hand, the “durrr, Guardiola has been exposed!” shit is incredibly stupid—so much so that it’s too exhausting to even get into it. Suffice it to say, once City go out and buy players that actually fit Guardiola’s style of play, there’s no doubt they’ll start nabbing trophies.
Regardless of all that, what everyone should be able to agree on is that Leicester City being the only EPL team left in the Champions League is hilarious and perfect. Yes, they probably should’ve lost to Sevilla and they’ll be huge underdogs no matter who they meet in the next round, but you never know, they just might fuck around and win this thing. As they proved just a year ago, miracles do happen sometimes.