Why would Pep EVER walk away from City?
Thrilling nights like this (and Haaland on the way) make Etihad the place to be
On THe upper tier of the huge stand opposite the dugouts at the etihad stadium hangs a banner thanking manchester City’s owner sheik mansour of abu Dhabi for a trophy-heavy first 10 years.
We are four years into the second decade of middle east ownership now and watching this incredible game of european football it was hard not to wonder what further fabulous dramas may lie ahead.
more particularly, it seemed increasingly strange — as City traded thunderous blows with the best team in spain — to ponder why Pep Guardiola would even think about leaving when his current contract expires at the end of next season.
We have seen some quite remarkable things at this stadium in recent times. some of them have involved games against Liverpool and against manchester United and against Tottenham.
It is almost 10 years ago that we sat spellbound as City tossed away their very first Premier League title against QPr and then, at the death, grabbed it back again.
This, though, was among the most thrilling of the lot.
This was real madrid in attendance. The most successful club in the history of european football. Leaders of La Liga by 15 points.
and City beat them wonderfully and dashingly. It was only due to real’s cussedness and indeed City’s rather ragged finishing that the margin of defeat was not greater.
For City were better by a distance for huge swathes of this game. They inflicted upon real possibly the most satisfying one-goal defeat in this great institution’s history.
real are still in this tie ahead of Wednesday’s second leg in madrid and will be desperately thankful for that.
This is the City team that Guardiola built and much as they were brilliantly expansive and precocious here, it is one that will only grow better, wiser and more talented from this point.
next season, for example, the Premier League leaders are expected to have the norwegian goal machine erling Haaland in their ranks.
so, yes, it seems strange that Guardiola would even think about leaving, as he has previously suggested he will. When he left Barcelona after four magnificent years in 2012, the great Catalan was burned out, worn down by the demands of the job and the constant needling of Jose mourinho’s real.
It does not feel the same now. The energy of Guardiola’s team reflects the enduring dynamism of their coach and to watch them play here was to watch one of the
greatest English sides any of us have ever seen.
City terrified and terrorised Real for the first half an hour. They were two goals up in record time and could have been out of sight by the time Karim Benzema scored beautifully, deftly but quite unexpectedly in the 33rd minute.
Real spent huge periods of this game on the retreat. But it was that opening spell that found them at their most disorganised, their most bereft, as they discovered, like many before them, just how it feels to walk into the teeth of the City threshing machine.
As the minutes ticked by, so the City opportunities came and went. The speed at which Guardiola’s players moved the ball was just too quick for the Spaniards. Every time a player in dark blue turned to face his own goal, it was to witness one in a lighter shade sprinting past him either with the ball, or in anticipation of receiving it.
City needed to be more clinical at that time. Riyad Mahrez shot when he should have passed. Gabriel Jesus passed when he should have shot.
Had Haaland been in this line-up already then maybe this game and this tie could have been over by half-time.
But is it not football’s — and indeed footballers’ — imperfections that keep pulling great coaches back into the game? There is no such thing as a finished job, a finished article, in sport and surely Guardiola will have pause to mull over that this summer whatever happens between now and the Champions League final in Paris on May 28.
Football teams do tend to exist in cycles. This much we know. The wheel turns and periods of excellence — or otherwise — come to an end. But it does not feel like that at the Etihad at the moment.
It feels as though this team, already free of the shadow of players like Vincent Kompany, Sergio Aguero and David Silva, is nearer the start of its road than the end.
For all its quirks, this has the look of the greatest City team Guardiola has assembled in his six years in England. Their rivalry with Liverpool is magnetic.
If Guardiola does not continue to work here beyond next season, it is hard to wonder where he will go. Even harder to work out why.