Sometime shortly after midday Central European Time on Friday, a fearful groan may well be heard at Uefa headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.
It will come from whoever is representing the unlucky club that ends up with their name paired next to Manchester City in the draw for the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
City have reached the last eight of club football’s most prestigious competition for the sixth year running, but seldom have they done so while setting down such a powerful message that in the competition that has been tantalisingly unwinnable so far, they really are ready to break their glass ceiling.
The 7-0 beating of RB Leipzig on Tuesday made an even more startling statement to rivals than the same scoreline they racked up against Schalke 04 to reach the quarter-finals in 2019. This time there is a sensational newcomer driving the push for Champions League glory and openly taking leadership of City’s highest ambitions.
Erling Haaland’s five goals matched the record for an individual in a single match in the competition, and he fired a clear warning that he wants more and more goals on these sorts of nights. When Haaland was substituted a little after an hour into the rout, he told City manager Pep Guardiola he had wanted to stay on to register a double hat-trick.
He already had what is known as a ‘perfect hat-trick’: a goal with the left foot, a goal with the right, a headed goal. Another header, like the one that put City 2-0 up, Haaland reacting sharpest when a Kevin de Bruyne shot came back off the Leipzig crossbar, would have made two of them.
The result resonated across Europe. “Who can stop the monster Haaland?” asked Wednesday’s edition of Portuguese sports newspaper Record. Benfica, who strolled into the quarter-finals with a 7-1 aggregate win over Brugge, will be hoping they are not asked to put their minds to that task.
Die Welt, the German daily, contemplated what it called “The Haaland Paradox”, the relatively low ratio of the Norwegian superstar’s touches of the ball – in a possession-based City side — to his extraordinary number of goals – 39 already in his 36 matches for the club he joined last July.
Bayern Munich, who have won eight out of eight Champions League matches this season, will be very pleased if they can avoid confronting that paradox in the next two months.
Leipzig, who had alarmed City with their second half display in the first leg, a 1-1 draw, were utterly steamrollered. If there must be some sympathy with their complaints about the penalty award that gave Haaland his first goal, by the time he had his third they were being thoroughly pulled apart, the confidence of the coveted young centre-back Josko Gvardiol visibly draining away. “We were eaten up out there,” said Benjamin Henrichs, the full-back. “It was brutal.”
Haaland described the City performance as “a kind of statement,” and explicitly took on responsibility for targeting the trophy that has eluded City, who lost in the semi-finals to Real Madrid last season, and were beaten by Chelsea in the final 12 months earlier.
“Of course the club want to win the Champions League,” he told CBS. “They have won the Premier League four times out of the last five, so they didn’t bring me in to win the Premier League. They know how to win that. You can read between the lines – I’m here to try to help the club develop more, to try to win the Champions League for the first time.”
“Having a weapon like Erling in this competition is important,” added Guardiola, “He’s an incredible guy with a huge talent, power and mentality, a serial winner.”
There was praise, too, for De Bruyne, who Guardiola had been lightly critical of in the lead-up to Leipzig’s visit for not focusing on the “simple” parts of his game. “Unstoppable,” said Guardiola of the midfielder. “This is the Kevin we know – the rhythm, his movement. We haven’t seen that so much this season.”
The rest of Europe will fear seeing more of it from here on. De Bruyne, even through his dips of form, has been Haaland’s most effective ally among City’s many creators, the suppliers of the passes Haaland envisaged himself capitalising on when, last year, he chose to move from Borussia Dortmund.
“I was thinking, last season, when they were crossing the ball in ‘I’d love to be there’,” recalled Haaland. “I knew I would score a lot of goals.”
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
LIVERPOOL SQUAD
Alisson Becker, Virgil van Dijk, Georginio Wijnaldum, James Milner, Naby Keita, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah, Joe Gomez, Adrian, Jordan Henderson, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Adam Lallana, Andy Lonergan, Xherdan Shaqiri, Andy Robertson, Divock Origi, Curtis Jones, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Neco Williams
What are the GCSE grade equivalents?
- Grade 9 = above an A*
- Grade 8 = between grades A* and A
- Grade 7 = grade A
- Grade 6 = just above a grade B
- Grade 5 = between grades B and C
- Grade 4 = grade C
- Grade 3 = between grades D and E
- Grade 2 = between grades E and F
- Grade 1 = between grades F and G
The specs: Lamborghini Aventador SVJ
Price, base: Dh1,731,672
Engine: 6.5-litre V12
Gearbox: Seven-speed automatic
Power: 770hp @ 8,500rpm
Torque: 720Nm @ 6,750rpm
Fuel economy: 19.6L / 100km
'Nightmare Alley'
Director:Guillermo del Toro
Stars:Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara
Rating: 3/5
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
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Gender pay parity on track in the UAE
The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.
"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."
Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.
"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.
As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general.
Like a Fading Shadow
Antonio Muñoz Molina
Translated from the Spanish by Camilo A. Ramirez
Tuskar Rock Press (pp. 310)
