Pep must follow his instincts and keep pounding that rock
‘WHEN nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.’
The quote is from Jacob Riis, the late 19th-century American social reformer, and is one that the San Antonio Spurs basketball team turned into a philosophy.
‘Pounding the rock’ became a metaphor for relentlessness and a locker-room credo, an instruction to never give up because in the end the goal would be achieved.
It is a maxim that would translate well for Paris St-germain as they prepare to contest their first Champions League final tonight and one which, given the parallels between the two clubs, would sit well at Manchester City, too.
PSG are proof, after years of strife, that the glass ceiling in Europe can be broken.
It helps when you possess a billion-euro hammer that can buy a strike force with the potency of Neymar and Kylian Mbappe, of course, but hit hard enough for long enough and something has to give.
For PSG, this has been the season when seven years of teasing as the nouveau riche nearly-men has finally given way to grudging admiration. They stand on the brink of becoming the first French kings of Europe since Marseille 27 years ago.
And if they can do it, then City should be certain they can eventually make it to the summit, too
While Paris might not match Manchester for chic or the Seine cut it as a rival for the ship canal, the similarities between the two football clubs are clear.
Off the field, both are stateowned new-money hustlers on the European scene, backed by vast Middle East wealth willing to walk a Financial Fair Play tightrope to achieve their grand ambitions.
On it, both are artists rather than artisans capable of painting the prettiest of pictures – or being mugged down an unexpected alley.
For PSG, bought in 2011 by
Qatar Sports Investments, the Champions League odyssey began seven years ago. It has taken four stumbles at the quarter-final stage and three at the round of 16 to reach the greatest stage in European club football.
For City, purchased three years earlier by the Abu Dhabi United Group, the high water mark extends to a semi-final exit to Real Madrid under Manuel Pellegrini in 2016 and no further.
Their failure to kick on since then under Pep Guardiola is perplexing. It is a last unticked box for him at the club. How he would love to scroll back to his success in the tournament with Barcelona, but with each passing season of anti-climax the question grows as to whether he and City will ever reach their nirvana.
AT the Football Writers’ Association’s Northern Managers Awards dinner in Manchester earlier last November – when such gatherings existed – Guardiola mentioned to Jurgen Klopp that the Liverpool manager might want to swap the Champions League trophy he had brought along for the Premier League trophy the City manager had with him.
The observation was framed as a joke, except Guardiola does not really do stand-up. Underneath, he meant it.
Klopp duly collected his part of the bargain but another infuriating European exit against Lyon meant more frustration for the Catalan.
It was a continuation of a theme and Guardiola received justified criticism afterwards for tinkering with his system and failing to trust his own positive instincts with his selection.
If there is one lesson from the make-up of tonight’s final, that should be it.
The strengths of both finalists lie in attack and they have been willing to go with that flow.
That does not mean City can forget their defensive rebuild – if they had conceded only five goals in the tournament like PSG, they could have made it to tonight’s showpiece – but the inference is that attack remains the way to go.
What every would-be European champion team needs is a little good fortune. PSG had theirs with the route they were handed through the knockout stages in Lisbon. Ties against Atalanta and Leipzig were a petal-strewn passage.
They almost fluffed their lines against the Italians, leaving it late to overturn a 1-0 deficit, but the fact that they were able to do so showed the resilience they have belatedly acquired.
Leipzig were simply blown away in the semi-final.
Bayern Munich will represent a significant step up but if the Parisians complete the job tonight it would send out a loud message to the blue half of Manchester.
Keep pounding the rock...