{"id":9551,"date":"2026-05-17T07:19:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T07:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=9551"},"modified":"2026-05-17T07:19:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T07:19:19","slug":"antoine-semenyos-moment-of-magic-lights-up-gloomy-wembley-but-more-doom-on-the-horizon-for-chelsea-as-european-hopes-fade-ahead-of-xabi-alonso-appointment-winners-and-losers-from-man-citys-fa-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=9551","title":{"rendered":"Antoine Semenyo’s moment of magic lights up gloomy Wembley – but more doom on the horizon for Chelsea as European hopes fade ahead of Xabi Alonso appointment: Winners and losers from Man City’s FA Cup final victory"},"content":{"rendered":"


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This will be remembered as the ‘Semenyo Final’ among the City fanbase, and for good reason. The match had been crying out for a moment of quality and a winning strike from either side as the clock ticked down towards extra-time, with Chelsea actually on the front foot at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was Semenyo who delivered – and then some. Ironically, he could have been lining up for the opposition, as the Blues considered signing him in 2019 when he was a Bristol City player.<\/span><\/p>\n

Having headed over from a glaring opportunity early in the second half, Semenyo redeemed himself by producing a wonderfully deft flick to divert Haaland’s intelligent cut-back beyond Robert Sanchez’s despairing dive, pirouetting and back-heeling it into the bottom corner to spark ecstasy in the away end.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s a moment that caps a fine individual season for the 26-year-old that spans his time with both Bournemouth and City and has culminated in him already winning two trophies since joining the Sky Blues in January, hitting the 20-goal mark to boot.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This will be remembered as the ‘Semenyo Final’ among the City fanbase, and for good…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}