City will look back and regret lost opportunity to climb to the summit
AS the t wo teams emerged, Pep Guardiola could be seen on the touchline, staring out over the turf, eyes glazed, a man seemingly seized by a deafening clarity.
On all four sides of the stadium around him blue and white f lags f luttered like a magnificent robe, lending the place a certain tranquility. Zero hour at the Etihad, and all was calm.
As the f ull-time whistle blew, all was calm again. The blue f lags had given way to empty blue seats; the City players sank numbly to their haunches. Only the racket coming from the Liverpool fans seemed to register. Guardiola had long since departed the scene: sent to the stands at half-time.
What happened in between was a lesson in the key dif ference in football between intent and purpose, between speed and haste.
The temptation will be to attribute City’s exit, and the f ive goals they conceded over the course of this tie, to some sort of essential moral failing, a weakness of the core.
Perhaps there may even be something in that. But what ultimately undid City was their failure to judge the tempo of the game, once at Anfield last week, and once again here.
“This time we begin the game trailing by three goals!” Guardiola wrote in his programme notes before the game, and somehow you feel that only Pep could make this most forlorn of lost causes sound like a wonderful adventure.
Yet for three- quarters of an hour, it was an adventure. From the moment Gabriel Jesus gave City an early lead, they believed.
Perhaps, in hindsight, City were just a tad too quick in those early moments, setting an unsustainable pace that would f ind them out later. Yet in those opening exchanges, City’s speed was thrilling and ruthless, moving the ball, demanding the ball, hunting the ball.
Mo Salah’s goal, 10 minutes into the second half, put the tie beyond City’s reach. But by then, they had already stopped playing the perfect game that Guardiola had demanded.
What happens now is anyone’s guess. These three consecutive defeats may not be enough to derail what has already been a successful season. But these three games have reacquainted City with their footballing mortality.
This was a huge opportunity missed: Real Madrid have been made to look ordinar y this season, Bayern Munich have regressed, Roma have no great pedigree in this competition. This could — perhaps should — have been City’s year.
They will be back, of course, and as Premier League champions. It will be the 50th anniversar y of their f irst ever tilt at the European Cup, when the great side of Lee, Bell and Summerbee came unstuck against Fenerbahce at the ver y f irst hurdle before claiming the Cup Winners’ Cup the following season. Now, again, the hope for City fans is that this side will return stronger for their chastening experience.
This is a club somehow at their most comfortable, their most purposeful, when they are standing at the foot of the mountain looking up, rather than at the summit looking down. Now, once again, they f ind themselves at base camp, the grand design on hold for another year at least.