Omar Marmoush and Erling Haaland
Erling Haaland consoles Omar Marmoush after his missed penalty in the FA Cup final
Manchester City's second successive FA Cup final defeat wasn't sealed with a kiss, but the smacker that Erling Haaland planted on the ball as he handed it over for their first-half penalty was the moment you got the feeling that this wasn't going to be their day.
Haaland surely didn't abdicate himself of penalty duties on the biggest stage of all, but the change summed up an afternoon of confusion in the City ranks. From the team selection to the substitutions to the penalty taker, not a lot of it made sense.
It's a quirk of Haaland's City career that he has never scored in a semi-final or final for the club, but that's all it is. A quirk. A record of 120 goals in 140 games isn't the resume of a player not suited to the big occasion.
He's missed three penalties this season as well, scoring four, but of all the stages to make a change to your spot-kick taker, an FA Cup final didn't feel like a wise choice. Haaland has the confidence and the bravado to put previous misses behind him. He's probably forgotten them the moment the ball has gone dead.
When he kissed the Wembley match ball and handed it to Omar Marmoush, he was also handing over the pressure. Marmoush never looked comfortable as referee Stuart Atwell confirmed the decision, and the delay would have only added to the nerves. Dean Henderson made a good save, but it was a saveable height.
Of course, there is no getting away from the injustice that City will feel. Henderson shouldn't have been on the pitch after clawing away a ball over the top from Haaland when out of his area. It was a clear red card, and only VAR Jarred Gillett couldn't see it.
But had City taken the gilt-edged chance, they would have levelled a final they had dominated early on without reward. Marmoush has had his bright moments since joining the club in January, but has scored in only five of his 20 games as a Blue, and you would surely want your most reliable, most ruthless goalscorer to take the biggest chances of all.
You wouldn't blame Marmoush, but it was an interesting day for another reappraisal of City's £180million January spending spree. The Egyptian missed the penalty, and Nico Gonalzez didn't even get onto the pitch. Neither did Abduokodir Khusanov or Vitor Reis, although that was less surprising
The absence of Gonzalez felt particularly telling. The lack of an established holding midfielder was always going to be a risk against a team so good on the break. The injury to Mateo Kovacic was a blow, but the decision not to start Gonzalez in his place showed how quickly he has fallen out of favour.
Guardiola was dubbing him a 'mIni Rodri' in February but now prefers to go into an FA Cup final without a deeper midfielder rather than play the Spaniard, who last started for the club a month ago.
The real Rodri was at Wembley with his teammates, and it's tempting to think that if he had been on the pitch, the opening goal would simply never have happened.
The massed Palace hordes behind the goal at the west end of Wembley had an excellent view of City's early domination. After a quarter of an hour, Guardiola's side had had 88% of the ball, with four shots and four corners. It was a ruthless strangulation of the game.
But it was a team set up to do that. When Palace managed to hack the ball clear during this spell, Bernardo and De Bruyne raced back to retrieve it. Guardiola controlled the clearance in his technical area, chucked it to De Bruyne, and the wave of attacks continued.
What it wasn't was a team that contained and stopped the fast breaks that Palace are so ruthlessly efficient at. When they got their first sniff of exposing City's midfield, they executed it brilliantly. Jean-Philippe Mateta held the ball up and spread it out to the advancing Daniel Munoz. Eberechi Eze finished superbly. It was a masterclass in exploiting City's vulnerabilities.
It also meant City had to chase the game, and after Marmoush had missed the penalty, things began to get a little more desperate. The sight of Claudio Echeverri making his debut off the bench at Wembley showed they were hoping for a Hail Mary.
Jack Grealish might have felt aggrieved he didn't get the call, but not as upset as Rico Lewis and James McAtee. Key figures in the run to the final, the academy duo were overlooked for the matchday squad.
Would McAtee have made more of an impact than Echeverri, who did force Dean Henderson into a save? We'll never know, but it was another unexpected decision on a day of confusion and regrets for City.