Manchester City won the 2023 UEFA Champions League by defeating Inter Milan, completing an unprecedented treble.
On Saturday, Manchester City finally experienced Champions League triumph as a second-half Rodri goal gave the favorites a 1-0 victory over Inter Milan in the dramatic championship game, enabling Pep Guardiola’s team to complete an incredible treble.
At the Ataturk Olympic Stadium, Rodri scored from a Bernardo Silva cutback midway through the second half to seal the victory in a match where City struggled to find their usual rhythm and lost Kevin De Bruyne to injury.
Erling Haaland, who has 52 goals this season, failed to score for the fifth game in a row, but City still had enough to defeat opponents who were never anticipated to advance this far.
City is the first English team to win a triple since Manchester United in 1999 after winning the FA Cup in addition to their fifth Premier League title in six seasons.
24 years ago, City defeated Gillingham in the third-tier play-off final of England on penalties.
Two years after losing to Chelsea in their first final, they have now cemented their position as England’s dominant team and have added the biggest trophy in European club football.
Owner Sheikh Mansour, who rarely attends City games, watched the game as his team completed their transformation from underdogs to world champions since he acquired the club in 2008.
While this is going on, Guardiola joins a select group of coaches who have won the Champions League three times, twelve years after last hoisting the trophy with Barcelona.
Although City defeated RB Leipzig, Bayern Munich, and Real Madrid to advance to the final, Inter saw Federico Dimarco and substitute Romelu Lukaku both almost equalize late in the game.
Inter had hoped to catch everyone off guard and win the trophy a fourth time. Although Simone Inzaghi’s team will compete again the following season, it was not to be.
In addition to rival United’s three championships, a victory for Guardiola’s team makes Manchester, after Milan, the only city to have produced two different competition winners.
The drama of the previous Champions League final held at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium did not compare to this one.
In this match in 2005, Liverpool won after coming back from a three-goal deficit against AC Milan to draw 3-3 and win on penalties.
Nevertheless, it also went off without a hitch, a year after chaos overshadowed the championship game at the Stade de France in Paris, even though the stadium’s location about 25 kilometers west of the center of Istanbul made it difficult for fans to get there.
