The night Pep’s men arrived
the innovator now; that his is the side which is moving on, leaving Guardiola struggling to harmonise with the same tune.
“With Luis (Suarez) maybe now we are a bit more aggressive when we attack at speed, whilst with Pep we used counter-attacks less,” Lionel Messi said earlier this week.
His goal was a metaphor for that: a counter-attack of maybe 20 seconds’ duration, which Messi began by blocking a shot in his own penalty area, before running the length of the pitch to take back from Neymar and score.
From Barcelona, the metronomic, almost cloying, passing – the “carousel” as Sir Alex Ferguson called if after Guardiola’s players had passed Manchester United to death in the 2009 Champions League Cup final – has gone. But it is not needed with trident of forwards.
“Nearly unstoppable”, Guardiola had called the two wide members of that triumvirate – Neymar and Messi. When Nicolas Otamendi surrendered cheap possession, Neymar was bearing down on Willy Caballero like a guided missile. It took a very fine save to palm his shot away.
This slip was part of a broader problem, as City’s attempts to match the Spaniards’ pace bred errors. That same pace initially made City’s forwards look almost sluggish by comparison.
Aguero had a chance wide right to supply a cross two minutes after Barcelona led and took what seemed an eternity to deliver the cross which hit the first obstacle in its path, Samuel Umtiti.