Guardiola laments City’s passing fancy
Pep Guardiola later reflected that his Manchester City had passed the ball for the sake of passing the ball, “and when that happens, it’s not football” he added, as if to explain that rarest of occurrences at the Etihad Stadium: a defeat for the home side.
You would have to go back to December 2016 for the last one, when Antonio Conte’s Chelsea were building up a head of steam in the Premier League and the Guardiola effect had not yet taken a firm hold at City. This time it was the Swiss champions, already pulverised 4-0 in the first leg in Basel and playing just for the hell of it, who pinched a footnote in the history of one of Europe’s most formidable sides.
They did so from one goal behind and through an eventual winner from Michael Lang, for whom it has been a remarkable Champions League season. The 27-year-old Swiss right-back scored the late winner against Manchester United in the group stages in November and against the other Mancunian superpower he has claimed another goal that he can cherish for ever.
City are in the Champions League quarter-finals as expected, for only the second time in this historic decade since the Abu Dhabi fossil fuel fortune pulled them out of mediocrity and into the elite.
Guardiola let most of his biggest names sit this one out and it was always likely to be a strange kind of game but even he might have been surprised by how far short the replacements fell in the end.
They had taken the lead through Gabriel Jesus after eight minutes and missed a lot more opportunities after that, but with six changes from the team that beat Chelsea, Guardiola said this was always going to be a different story. “In the second half, we forgot to attack, we forgot to play,” he said. “Passing the ball means to move the opponents in order to attack, but to just pass for itself is nothing and the second half was really, really poor.”
Instead of Kevin De Bruyne, he had Yaya Toure orchestrating the match in his own sweet time, and there was also no Sergio Aguero, David Silva, Kyle Walker, Raheem Sterling, Nicolas Otamendi or Ederson. Phil Foden made his third start for the club and Guardiola said the English teenager had been one of the few, along with Leroy Sane, whom he believed had tried to take the game to Basel in the second half.
Lang’s goal came with 19 minutes left and although Basel never looked remotely like troubling City as far as the direction of the tie went, they did show bravery in the circumstances once their excellent striker Mohamed Elyounoussi scored the equaliser. City attempted 1,074 passes over the course of 93 minutes, with 977 completed – even more than their 902-pass Premier League record against Chelsea on Sunday – and more than any side in the Champions League this season.
“It was just passes for itself [for the sake of passing],” Guardiola said. “That is not football. We had problems but are in the quarterfinals, this kind of position is not going to happen in the quarterfinals, where you are 4-0 up from the first leg. Then, when it’s scary, and you could be going out, the rhythm will be totally different.”
He should know. Guardiola reached the Champions League last eight for the eighth time in his nine seasons as a manager at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and now City. It is a remarkable record, although on this occasion there was a little taste of triumph for Basel’s young manager Raphael Wicky.
Bernardo Silva, the man who measures the weight of every pass down to the last ounce, played the ball that took out three defenders and found Jesus at the back post to score a simple opener. It was the Brazilian’s first goal since the win over Leicester City on Nov 18 and he looked suitably emotional about it all.
Basel had just 30 per cent of possession all night and yet they converted three attempts on target into two goals. The equaliser was made by a big clearance that came to Blas Riveros, a Paraguayan whose run forward seemed to draw the entire City defence his way. His ball into the near side of the box was met by Elyounoussi, a hard-working Norwegian striker who had time for one touch to control it and another to bury it past Carlos Bravo at his near post.
After the hour mark, Guardiola sent on another teenager, Spanish midfielder Brahim Diaz, in place of Ilkay Gundogan. In the meantime, Basel became that bit more adventurous. It is hard to chase a four-goal deficit when you are deprived of the ball and the manager dares only commit one player forward but once again in the second half, they took their chance when it arrived.
It was created by Elyounoussi who chased a lost cause deep into the corner, retrieved the ball and managed to pick out the run of Lang who hit a fine shot at the near post which was past Bravo before he had the chance to react.
“You will find in all the clubs in the world when you make six changes, the team is not the same,” Guardiola said. “When you are a stable team, and you have one or two changes per match, the team is stable. That’s why I insisted we started in that way we did, our rhythm was good. Second half we just passed the ball to pass the ball. That is why everything was done slowly, everything without rhythm.” Manchester City