Jim Beglin: "That is brilliant from Kanté. A few moments ago, Bernardo got away from him in a similar pocket of space, but this time he reads the pass before De Bruyne has even finished shaping his body."
Peter Drury: "And now Manchester United are away! The door opens, and suddenly red shirts are pouring through it!"
The roar from the United end rose like a wave.
Kanté drove through midfield, his short legs pumping furiously, and even De Bruyne could not catch him once he broke into stride.
Because De Bruyne had drifted inside moments earlier, a huge channel had opened on the left.
Ashley Young and Herrera both sprinted forward.
Judging by the way United flooded into attack, they were not interested in slowing the move down.
They wanted to take this transition as far as it could go and turn one interception into a goal-scoring chance.
City could no longer keep their defensive block narrow.
Open play was different from defending a set piece. Once the attacking side entered the penalty area with numbers, every option became dangerous.
A shot, a cutback, a low cross, a disguised pass—any of them could tear the shape apart.
Kyle Walker raced after Ashley Young, while Gündogan was the only City midfielder close enough to provide cover.
Kanté did not hold the ball for a second longer than necessary. He slipped it to Pogba, and the connection between them was immediate
They had played together for years with the French national team, and their understanding showed in the timing of the pass and the movement around it.
Pogba glanced over his shoulder.
Ling and Rashford were making overlapping runs ahead of him, both ready to change direction the instant the ball was released.
But Pogba also noticed Laporte and Otamendi staying tight, each defender prepared to step across if the pass came too early.
So the better option was to control the tempo.
After all, Pogba had once played alongside Pirlo.
He knew when a counterattack needed speed, and he also knew when it needed one extra touch to make the opponent hesitate.
Gündogan, worried about being spun, kept a cautious distance and waited for Pogba to turn before pressing him.
Pogba did not turn.
After a brief pause, he used the outside of his foot to whip a diagonal pass into space.
"N'Golo!"
Kanté heard his name and received the ball again.
At that same moment, Laporte's attention shifted for half a second.
That was all Ling needed as he exploded forward.
Kanté struck the ball first time.
Thwack!
The clean sound of boot meeting ball cracked through the air like a starting pistol, and Ling shot forward as if the turf itself had launched him.
The camera chased him across the pitch, the image blurring slightly as he tore through the frame.
His studs bit into the grass with brutal force, ripping up small clumps of dirt and turf with every stride, each step showing the terrifying violence of his acceleration.
Manchester United's number 7 was moving like a bolt of lightning, but there was nothing wild about it.
His running rhythm was clean, controlled, and frighteningly efficient.
Fast!
Ling felt as if some surging power had taken hold of him and hurled him forward.
The sound of the stadium faded. Even his heartbeat seemed to fall behind him.
The man arrived at the ball exactly as the ball arrived for him.
Kanté's through pass was so perfectly timed that Ling did not even need to slow down.
Whoosh!
Gasps rippled around Wembley. United fans were already rising with their arms in the air, while City supporters clutched their heads before the shot had even come.
Without comparison, there was no true sense of the gap.
In the latest FIFA 2020 ratings, Jeremy Ling's pace was listed at 94.
While Laporte's was 63.
Laporte had complained about it on Twitter before, but at that moment, as he watched Ling sprint away from him, he finally understood.
The rating was not wrong.
He felt like a two-cylinder farm tractor trying to chase down a V16 turbocharged supercar.
Even if he burned himself out completely, he was never catching him.
"Huff, huff, huff—"
Laporte had barely managed a few desperate breaths before Ling had already opened the gap.
He wanted to cry, but even that felt useless.
There was no chance for a tactical foul now.
As Ling charged toward goal, he felt his perception sharpen. Every detail seemed clearer than it should have been: Ederson's stance, the angle of his shoulders, the direction of his weight, the split-second calculation before the goalkeeper committed.
Step.
Shift.
Step again.
Shift again.
Without slowing down, Ling threw three feints in rapid succession, each one sharp, wide, and violently fast.
Ederson proved why he was a world-class goalkeeper.
He refused to bite on the first feint, barely held himself together through the second, and only threw his body sideways on the third.
Then, too late, he remembered the nickname people in football had given Ling's move.
The Death Pendulum.
For an ordinary person, even attempting that kind of wide, high-speed pendulum motion would probably tear the thigh apart.
For most professional players, the risk to the knee alone would be enough to make them think twice.
But Ling?
'What a damn monster.'
Ederson cursed inwardly, then could only turn his head and watch helplessly as Ling broke past him on the left.
To be honest, Ling was not completely fine either.
For one brief instant, he thought he heard something strange from his knee, and he nearly lost his balance right before the finish.
Only the injury immunity module gave him the nerve to use such a brutal movement so often!
Ling steadied himself, opened his body, and pushed the ball into the empty net.
Peter Drury: "LING IS THROUGH! HE HAS LEFT THEM ALL BEHIND! THE KEEPER IS BEATEN, THE NET IS WAITING—AND JEREMY LING HAS DONE IT AGAIN! WEMBLEY BELONGS TO HIM IN THIS MOMENT!"
"A FLASH OF RED, A SURGE OF PURE DEVASTATION, AND MANCHESTER UNITED HAVE THEIR LEAD BACK! CITY SET THE TRAP, BUT LING HAS RUN STRAIGHT THROUGH IT AND TORN THE WHOLE THING TO PIECES!"
Jim Beglin: "It's outrageous, Peter. The timing of Kanté's pass is perfect, but Ling still has so much to do. The first touch keeps him moving, the acceleration destroys Laporte, and then the composure against Ederson is just ridiculous. That's not just pace. That's balance, technique, and nerve."
Peter Drury: "Look at the speed reading coming in now—37.21 kilometres per hour. That is not a sprint. That is a red-shirted lightning strike."
Jim Beglin: "Just to be clear, that's his top speed rather than his average speed, but even so, it's frightening. You're talking about a burst that puts him close to elite sprinting numbers. If he could hold that across a full hundred metres, people would start asking whether he had wandered into the wrong sport."
Peter Drury: "And perhaps lucky for the sprinters, Usain Bolt has already retired—from athletics and, briefly, from football too."
The camera returned to the pitch.
Surrounded by his teammates, Ling kept rubbing his knee.
Maguire looked at him with the expression of a man imagining pain he did not even want to experience.
"Ling, you're an absolute freak," he said. "If I tried a pendulum with that kind of movement, my ACL would probably snap in two."
"Use it less if you can," Matic advised, his voice steadier but just as serious. "You're young now, and your body can take it, but moves like that always come with a price."
Ling nodded.
There was a reason Ronaldo's old pendulum was rarely seen in modern football.
The movement was beautiful, but it was also unreasonable. It demanded too much from the knees, the thighs, the hips, the balance—everything.
Very few players could perform it cleanly, and even fewer could do it repeatedly at full speed.
Ling was simply a man with cheats.
...
While Manchester United celebrated, the Manchester City players looked helpless.
How were they supposed to defend that?
They tried to think of an answer, but none came.
A football match lasted more than ninety minutes. How many chances a team created depended on its overall strength, structure, and control of the game.
But how many of those chances actually became goals depended on the players themselves.
If Ling had been replaced by Lukaku, United would not be leading 2-1.
They would have been lucky not to be trailing 2-0.
Guardiola's mood was almost identical to his players'.
Could he blame the defence for that goal?
Not really.
To stop Jeremy Ling properly, the solution could not begin with the last line of defence.
By the time Ling was sprinting directly at the centre-backs, the danger had already gone too far.
The problem was the defensive midfield.
Again.
Gündogan was not enough for this kind of game.
Rodri was necessary.
Guardiola made up his mind then and there. No matter what it cost, he had to bring Rodri in.
...
On the other side, Mourinho's eyes widened slightly.
A goal like Ling's, full of power, speed, and direct violence, was the kind of goal he could watch a hundred times, a thousand times, and still not grow tired of.
Sometimes he really did feel as if his luck had gone beyond reason.
How else could he have found a player like Ling?
"Have Luke and McTominay warm up," Mourinho said, cutting into Faria's celebration before it carried on too long.
"We'll need to strengthen the defence soon."
United were ahead for the moment, but Mourinho knew Guardiola still had another card to play.
Leroy Sané.
The winger carried serious attacking threat and had the kind of finishing ability Sterling often lacked when the moment became too clean.
With Mahrez absent, City's right side did not have the same attacking sharpness, but Sané could change the entire direction of the match if he found space.
United's right flank relied heavily on Wan-Bissaka's defending. If City overloaded that side, one crack could become a collapse.
Sure enough, not long after the restart, Guardiola made his move.
Sané replaced Sterling.
Fernandinho came on for Gündogan.
City were not finished yet!
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