CITY LAP UP THE CHEERS
Pep’s worthy winners are lauded by their supporters
IT COULD have been won by a freak breakaway goal or on the lottery of penalty kicks.
A fully-fit Harry Kane might have conjured some matchchanging moment to turn the balance of play on its head.
Instead, Pep Guardiola earned the right to lift his fourth League Cup the same way as he did the rest – purely on sporting merit.
Manchester City got to fill the Wembley air with champagne bubbles and dance with the cup in front of long-missed fans because they had been by far the better team.
The only real surprise – perhaps even to himself – was the identity matchwinner.
But as extra-time loomed, Aymeric Laporte arrived at the far post to head in a free-kick impeccably delivered by Kevin De Bruyne after a tired foul by Serge Aurier on Raheem Sterling.
Laporte was lucky still to be on the pitch given he probably should already have been booked before he was shown a yellow card on the stroke of of their
Man City Man City Man City Man City
3-0 0-0 2-1 1-0 half-time. But the winner was one of 21 efforts on Tottenham’s goal, with only two at the other end. Mourinho-style statistics, one might cruelly conclude.
However, no buses were being parked at Wembley this time. It was clear Ryan Mason’s team had been told to go out and play, but City simply had not allowed it. For the opening half in particular, the presence of City’s supporters at one end of the famous stadium seemed like a magnet to the ball as Guardiola’s side demonstrated once again that, when they are functioning like a well-honed unit, they are in a “super” league of their own.
As soon as Spurs got 40 yards from their own line, some invisible force seemed to push them backwards again as City
dictated play in and around their opponents’ penalty area for vast swathes of the game.
Riyad Mahrez was a decent finish away from being at his tormenting best.
Sergio Reguilon, presented with a prized ham by Jose Mourinho for the way he defended against City in the league, was making a pig’s ear of keeping the irrepressible Phil Foden at bay. Even Sterling, short on form, was back in his element and could have had a hat-trick before the game had got started properly.
Only the back-to-the-wall defending of Eric Dier and Toby Alderweireld, together with a
World Cup-winning goalkeeper in Hugo Lloris, kept Foden, Sterling and the rest of City from rattling up a cricket score.
In fact, the sustained deadlock seemed so unlikely, you began to wonder if one of those unbelievable upsets was about to be served up. You could feel in the air how desperately Spurs fans wanted it.
Kane, a passenger in the 2019 Champions League final after injury, looked fit enough despite his latest knock to play a significant part. Could he finally get the silverware he craved?
Spurs’ interim head coach Mason, 29, was in the stands the last time the club won a trophy in 2008 and played in the Spurs team who lost the 2015 final.
Barely four years after his playing career ended with a fractured skull, was fate going to offer up some sort of apology by making it third time lucky for such a likeable young man? Emphatically, no. An enterprising Giovani Lo Celso effort just after the break which was neatly saved and a horrible confusion when Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg broke through soon after to waste Spurs’ best chance saw silverware again slip through their fingers.
Ominously, Manchester City are just getting started.