LYON SHATTER CITY’S DREAM
More VAR misery as Pep’s men flop again in Euro test
PEP GUARDIOLA’S Champions League curse with Manchester City struck again last night when he and his team blew what he had called a ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ to win the biggest club prize in the game when they crashed to defeat against Lyon, the seventh best team in France.
Raheem Sterling compounded City’s misery with an astonishing open-goal miss five minutes from time and Lyon promptly confirmed their shock victory when substitute Moussa Dembele scored his second goal of the night to makje it 3-1 following an uncharacteristic mistake by goalkeeper Ederson.
Amid the emptiness of the Estadio Jose Alvalade, City’s ineptitude felt even more surreal.
What happens to them in this competition? What happens to Guardiola?
It is as if both manager and team have developed some sort of allergy to Europe’s premier competition.
This is the tournament which defines players and managers, which the elite value more than any other, and yet year after year, Guardiola, probably the best coach in the world, contrives to blow it.
After a series of tactical mishaps in recent years, he made another last night, picking a conservative line-up, trying to anticipate what Lyon were going to do rather than trusting to the brilliance of his own side.
David Silva, Riyad Mahrez and Bernardo Silva were all left on the bench. By the time Guardiola changed it, it was too late.
This was not quite the convulsion of Barcelona’s 8-2 defeat by Bayern Munich on Friday night but it was still a huge shock.
Guardiola was brought to City to win this competition and this was probably their worst failure so far. It is a huge blow to the club’s ambitions and leaves a question mark over how much further he can take them.
Lyon will play Bayern in the semifinal, the other contested by Paris Saint-Germain and RB Leipzig — so two French clubs against two from Germany.
Guardiola had called City’s shot at glory here in Lisbon a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ on the eve of the game and it felt as if it were a chance to right a wrong.
They have played breathtaking football in the Premier League since he arrived at the club but had never reached the Champions League semi-finals under his leadership.
Guardiola won this competition twice in his first three attempts while he was with Barcelona but has not even made the final since 2011.
This represented a chance for him to become only the sixth manager in history to win the competition with two different clubs and only the fourth — after Bob Paisley, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane — to win it three times. It is the legacy he deserves.
The idea that there is no pressure on Guardiola to win the Champions League for City is a fallacy. It is also patronising beyond belief, as if little City would be silly to dream of joining the giants of European football.
The reality is that City are one of football’s giants. They just need to win the Champions League to confirm it.
So if there isn’t any pressure on them to win the Champions League, there should be. It is what any ambitious club of a certain size and backed by a certain amount of wealth aspires to. Why would a team as brilliant as City and as expensively assembled not want to win it?
For a club like Real Madrid or Barcelona, as Luka Modric said last week, no matter what they win, if they do not win the Champions League, they feel their season is ‘not complete’.
It should be the same with City. They are good enough. They just need to start the habit because once they win one, the belief it gives them, the status it will give them as a club, will push them to win again and again.
They should have taken the first step towards the semi-finals in only the third minute when a clever ball from Joao Cancelo inside the full back allowed Sterling to get free inside the Lyon box.
Sterling tried to pull the ball back to Gabriel Jesus who was unmarked in the middle but it was kicked away by Fernando Marcai. City should have made more of the opportunity. It was the best one they were going to get for the rest of the half.
Lyon may have come into the game as heavy underdogs but they played with assurance and composure from the start. Their hunger in the press and their speed on the counter-attack unsettled City who, for once, looked slow and laboured.
It soon became evident this was not going to be the stroll for Guardiola’s side so many had predicted.
Lyon were resolute in defence and lightning quick in transition and they took the lead out of nothing midway through the half.
Karl Ekambi sprinted on to a long ball over the top and when Eric Garcia tack led him, the ball squirted straight to Maxwel Cornet. Ederson had come out to try to stifle the danger and Cornet bent it round him with his left foot into the corner of the net.
It was the fourth goal Cornet had scored against City in three Champions League games and it unleashed a new stream of doubts about whether Guardiola had overthought his selection again.
City were struggling for width and their most potent weapon, Kevin de Bruyne, was finding it hard to get on the ball. City dominated possession, of course, but little of it threatened the Lyon goal. Lyon looked relatively comfortable.
Rodri should have done better than hit a tame sidefoot straight at goalkeeper Lopes from ten yards out but where there is De Bruyne, though, there is hope and in first half injury time he hit a brilliant pass with the outside of his right boot behind the Lyon back four.
Sterling was on it in a flash but he could not control it first time and it gave Lopes time to spread himself at his feet and block his shot.
Ten minutes after half-time, Guardiola tried to fix things. He brought on Riyad Mahrez for Fernandinho, switched to a back four and moved De Bruyne into a more central position in a rank of three behind Gabriel Jesus.
City improved. De Bruyne whistled two free kicks narrowly over the bar. But time was starting to run out.
The substitution and the change of formation had transformed the mood of the game, though, and 20 minutes from the end, City equalised.
Sterling chased a ball to the byline and turned inside his marker. He saw De Bruyne sprinting forward and played the ball into his path. De Bruyne is way too good to miss that kind of opportunity and he placed it perfectly out of the reach of Lopes
and into the bottom corner. City were brimming with confidence now and swarmed all over Lyon.
Sterling twisted and turned his man before drifting a cross to Gabriel Jesus at the back post but the Brazil forward volleyed it into the ground and over the bar.
But just when the tide seemed to have turned, Lyon struck again.
Dembele ran on to a through ball and advanced on Ederson before slotting it under him and into the net. There was a long VAR check over a potential foul on Aymeric Laporte but the goal was given.
City seemed stunned but Sterling will be haunted by one of the misses of the season when he lifted a simple tap-in from a few yards out over the bar.
Dembele then completed the shock a few minutes later when he prodded home after Ederson had failed to hold a tame shot.
City’s Champions League curse had struck again.