Manchester City Wins 2012 FA Community Shield Over Chelsea

Manchester City defeated Chelsea today 3-2 to win this year's FA Community Shield. Man City tallied all three of their goals in the first 20 minutes of the second half in order to hold on for the victory.

Everything wasn't peaches and cream for Man City as Chelsea was the first team to get on the board. The pace of play was great as both sides were attacking well. Chelsea broke through in the 40th minute when Fernando Torres received a touch pass from Ramires within the penalty area with his right foot. Torres was able to tap the ball to his left foot and kick it into goal.

The score remained 1-0 up to intermission, but things turned bad for Chelsea right before the end of the first half. In the 42nd minute, Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic clipped Aleksandr Kolarov on a horrible tackle. The referee gave Ivanovic a red card for blatant disregard of tackling technique. On the tackle, both feet of Ivanovic clipped the lower leg of Kolarov with the studs up. Ouch!

That meant that Chelsea was down to 10 men for the second half. Uh-oh! City went to work. In the 52nd minute, Yaya Toure scored off of a corner kick that wasn't deflected out of the box efficiently by John Terry.

Seven minutes later, Man City took the lead when Carlos Tevez laced a shot into the top corner of the net. City wasn't done yet as Samir Nasri scored off of a cross from Kolarov in the 65th minute to put them ahead 3-1.

At this point, the game appeared to be out of reach, but Chelsea continued to play hard. That effort paid off when Ryan Bertrand (who?) scored off of a deflected shot in the 80th minute that was muffed by the goalkeeper. However, Chelsea was not able to find the equalizer in the last ten minutes.

This game is usually played at Wembley Stadium, but due to the Summer Olympics, today's FA Community Shield matchup took place at Villa Park in Birmingham.

Here are the starting lineups from the match. Both teams played with the standard 4-4-2 formation.

Chelsea -- Goalkeeper: Cech. Defenders: Cole, Terry, David Luiz, Ivanovic. Midfielders: Hazard, Lampard, Ramires, Obi Mikel. Forwards: Torres, Mata.

Manchester City -- Goalkeeper: Pantilimon. Defenders: Kompany, Zabaleta, Kolarov, Savic. Midfielders: Milner, Nasri, De Jong, Yaya Toure. Forwards: Kun Aguero, Tevez.