Pep’s City legacy

the big teams you are confident to fight against them. We are only three or four months into playing a different way,” Guardiola said after an Ilkay Guendogan double and a Kevin de Bruyne free kick overturned Barca’s lead through Lionel Messi.

“We try and now we realise we won against the best team. For the future generations, they are going to realise ‘Wow these guys are able to beat the best team.’

“It is the same when the group of Joe Hart and Vincent Kompany won the Premier League twice. The players who come now know they have to do that.”

After five times being outplayed by Barcelona in recent European combat, City turned the tables in unlikely fashion after 40 minutes of Barca control which persuaded Guardiola that the club he once led to two European titles still have “the best team in the world.”

Yet once a defensive lapse had set up Guendogan’s equaliser before halftime, Guardiola reckoned “it changed absolutely everything for our mood” and City then gave Barcelona a rare runaround in a game littered with errors amid excellence.

Barca’s vaunted trident of Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez seemed to shrink in comparison to Sergio Aguero while the magnificent De Bruyne ran the midfield show with Fernandinho, Guendogan and David Silva.

Now it appears Guardiola has come through the worst winless streak of his career with attacking principles and confidence still intact after winning what he had billed as City’s “final”.

For even if City still have work to do to reach the knockout stages from Group C, it is hard to escape the feeling all the Pep talking might yet transform another club’s face and ambition.

Basel 1 Zuffi 76 Arsenal 3 Xhaka 20 Giroud 41 Ozil 87

PSG 2 Matuidi 43 Meunier 90

GROUP B

Besiktas 1 Napoli 1 Quaresma 79-pen Hamsik 82

Benfica 1 Dynamo Kiev 0 Salvio 45+2-pen

GROUP C

M’gladbach 1 Celtic 1 Stindl 32 Dembele 76-pen

Man City 3 Barcelona 1 Gundogan 39, 74 Messi 21 De Bruyne 51

GROUP D

Atletico Madrid 2 Rostov 1

Azmoun 30 Griezmann 28, 90+3

PSV 1

Arias 14

Lewandowski 34-pen, 74

Bayern Munich 2