Steve McManaman baffled fans for saying Rodrygo's second goal was "made in South Africa" during Real Madrid's 2-0 win over Chelsea on Tuesday.
Rodrygo, 22, opened the scoring for Los Blancos in the 57th minute as he finished off a ruthless attack, before completing his brace late on. It capped off a superb two-legged performance from Real, who progress into the semi-final where they will face either Manchester City or Bayern Munich in the last four.
However, McManaman provided a rather bizarre piece of analysis when describing Real's second goal. Uruguayan star Federico Valverde bamboozled through the heart of the Chelsea back-line, before squaring the ball on a plate for Rodrygo to finish into an empty net.
Former Liverpool midfielder McManaman, who was on co-commentary duty for BT Sport, said the goal was "made in South Africa" as he began to describe the goal. Valverde is in fact from Uruguay and South America, with Brazil's Rodrygo coming from the same continent. Vinicius Jr was also involved at the start of the move and was also born in Brazil.
Viewers highlighted the error on social media. One said: "Vinicius Junior, Fede Valverde and Rodrygo combine for a filthy goal Steve McManaman: 'Made in South Africa'". Another added: "'Made in South Africa, Fede Valverde of Uruguay.' Don't think Steve McManaman done well [sic] in Geography."
A third said: "Steve McManaman describing a Valverde assist for Rodrygo as 'made in South Africa' is quite astonishing tbh." A fourth claimed: "Steve McManaman saying Rodrygo's Valverde-assisted goal was 'made in South Africa' is my favourite bit of commentary of the season."
As for Chelsea, they lacked a real cutting edge on the night against the reigning European champions. Marc Cucurella had the Blues' best chance but he was unable to beat Thibaut Courtois. Rio Ferdinand reflected on Chelsea's performance as they fell to a fourth successive defeat since Frank Lampard took over as Interim Manager.
He said: "They don't score enough goals, that's obvious. That team that started the game had 17 goals between them for the season - Benzema outscored that completely on his own, so that tells you where they're at. Today in the first half they created chances, they had arguably the best chances in the first half, but they just didn't have anyone to put the ball in the net and that’s been an issue.
"Recruitment in the summer is going to be massive for this football club - as much as they want to get players, to get people out. They've got to get players out to make sure there’s room to bring players in."
Michael Owen added: "Overall I didn’t think Chelsea were bad at all tonight and I think Frank Lampard can take positives, but again, going back to what we said at the start of the show, they spent all that money and don’t get any strikers in, look toothless, goalscoring is a problem. But, it's not just the centre forwards, throughout the team they don’t really score enough goals amongst themselves."
