Defiant City driven by Uefa’s sanction to humble the kings of ‘Old Europe’
Guardiola’s players give dramatic response to prospective two-year ban with late fightback
Oh, the irony, if Uefa has handed Manchester City a cause to build a Champions League winning run around. Not a just cause, but a grudge, a persecution complex to drive them on. There may have been a more prosaic explanation for their impressive late fightback. Twenty minutes into this clash between the pious and the pariahs, City broke out of their retro English 4-4-2 formation and started to play, realising, surely, that they had beaten better teams than this, and that Zinedine Zidane’s Real Madrid were not to be feared.
When they stopped over-respecting their hosts, City went after them, and were rewarded with one of their best wins in Europe – and the first for the four Premier League teams in this round of 16. Defending the honour of English football was not a job City expected to be taking on with a two-year ban from Europe hanging over them. They performed it well but must guard against Spanish creative desperation in the return leg.
With Chelsea, Tottenham and Liverpool all beaten in first-leg games, Pep Guardiola’s team could escape the doghouse for the night and feed off defiance. They started out impersonating one of the teams they have to face domestically. Burnley, perhaps, in banks of four, with the centre-forward (Gabriel Jesus) helping out at left-back.
Yet City were soon into their more familiar kaleidoscopic formation and turned this tie around after Isco had put Real ahead. Uefa’s swingeing prospective punishment has put the hurry-up on City in Europe. Hurry up, before they are ejected. Hurry up, before Guardiola leaves or the team break up. And there was enough heat already on Guardiola in Europe, with his run of quarter-final exits and the suspicion that his Champions League-winning years might have begun and ended at Barcelona.
Guardiola denied that the Uefa dispute was a motivation. “No, they want to do it for themselves, for the club,” he said. Yet it was for nights like this that the oil state Abu Dhabi has spent £1.5billion-plus, initially in a run-down part of Manchester, and latterly as part of a global football empire and soft power project. For Guardiola’s two English title-winning seasons, the orchestral football was the story. But in this campaign, Liverpool’s rise and Uefa’s financial and moral counterpunch have cast doubt on City’s raison d’etre.
Thus, at the Santiago Bernabeu, at the heart of what they would call “Old Europe”, City were condemned to battle for a result, while the swirl of politics and power abated for 90 minutes.
Guardiola continues to the bete noire of Real’s fans – the artiste who weaponised Johan Cruyff ’s ideas against Madrid, who must have enjoyed seeing football’s best coach squirm on Uefa’s hook. And “best” may soon become debatable when Jurgen Klopp bestrides the game as manager of the English, European and world champions. Guardiola Delight in Madrid: Kevin De Bruyne celebrates scoring City’s second goal the visionary has been forced into street-fighter mode.
You can only be shamed if you choose to go along with the shaming, and City are not doing so. Even as the players psyched themselves up for their first knockout tie of this Champions League campaign, an appeal against a two-year ban from Europe and a £25 million fine was landing with the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The timing felt significant. It was a riposte to the old guard represented so haughtily by Real, and a rallying cry to City’s players, who could enter the Bernabeu knowing they might yet be playing in Europe next term and might not have to dig escape tunnels from Manchester. “Simply not true,” is how chief executive Ferran Soriano describes the Uefa charges, which is setting a high bar for an appeal. Below that rhetoric all sorts of legal nuances will doubtless be explored.
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan has invested north of £1.5 billion since taking over in 2008 and, with American and Chinese investors buying stakes, City are now valued at £3.7 billion. They are rich enough to dismiss the pressure to be crowned European champions as pundit noise, or the propaganda of enemies. But the pressure feels real enough because of Liverpool’s superiority at home and the sense that football is pinching its nose over City’s alleged concealment of what they were up to over financial fair play.
Guardiola’s problem, of course, is that City’s league form has been up and down – mostly down – by their high standards. He is trying to forge a Champions League-winning side from unpromising material. But it does happen that way in Europe. Teams struggle and dodge their way to glory – or the final, at any rate. City, however, were meant to glide there, along a path of bouquets. First Jesus saved them, then a Kevin De Bruyne penalty blew away the shame for a day.