WHERE HAS CITY SPARKLE GONE?
One down, three to go for Guardiola’s lacklustre side as Ziyech goal is final
IN ALL likelihood, this will still be a momentous season for Manchester City. A third Premier League title in four years will soon be collected. A Champions League semi-final looms and the League Cup final is imminent next weekend.
Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson used to have disappointments like these. The kind of setback where an unprecedented quadruple falls by the wayside. What United, or any side, would give for a season like this now?
And yet, this was a significant disappointment for City and Pep Guardiola. All along, the coach has downplayed the prospect of winning every trophy this season. As he should. That’s how it is when you’re trying to get your players merely to focus on the next game.
And yet, knowing the greedy accumulator of trophies Guardiola is, he must have eyed up all four. He is an insatiable collector of records. His joy at reaching the 100-point landmark in the Premier League in 2018 showed that. Given the quality he has at his disposal, they will doubtless pick themselves up, dust themselves down and dispose of Aston Villa on Wednesday.
And yet, then comes an intriguing run of games. Tottenham in t hei r c ur r e nt state in the Carabao Cup final with Harry Kane possibly out, shouldn’t hold too many fears. And yet, his nemesis Jose Mourinho stands in the way of his first trophy of the season. It seems unlikely he could pull off one last feat of defying Guardiola, but maybe, like Samson at his death, Jose might just bring the whole building crashing down on his foe?
And t hen t here i s Mauricio Pochettino to face, Paris St-Germain with Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. Pochettino of course has stopped Guardiola in his Champions League tracks before, in that contentious quarter-final in 2019.
The issue for Guardiola is, superb though City have been since Christmas, there is a distinct lack of sparkle now that Sergio Aguero is in semi-retirement mode. They have nobody like Neymar, nor Mbappe. Not Raheem Sterling in this form, underwhelming again; not Gabriel Jesus, capable but no more; not Ferran Torres, so anonymous he was withdrawn on 63 minutes.
Restoring Riyad Mahrez and Phil Foden, who shone when he came on, to the starting line-up would make a difference, of course. But it’s hard to win the Champions League without a truly great forward. PSG have at least two.
This was a thoroughly deserved win for Chelsea in a largely nondescript match. It’s perhaps inevitable. Ask professional footballers to play non-stop football twice a week for 11 months, with a short monthlong break for respite, and the quality will suffer eventually.
Some games are superb despite t he unusually i ntense season. We’ve just enjoyed a great week of Champions League t i es, with absorbing fixtures between City and Dortmund and Paris St-Germain and Bayern Munich.
But the chances are, if you keep going back asking for more, the reserves of energy and entertainment capacity will diminish.
Chelsea and City players seemed set on making the point to a teatime terrestrial TV audience of millions, that more content doesn’t always mean more entertainment. UEFA might have been hiding behind the sofa if they believed this could be their end-of-season extravaganza of a Champions League final. T h o mas Tu c h e l and Pep Guardiola, equally obsessive on the details of the game, once confided in each other at a private dinner at a Michelin-starred Munich restaurant six years ago, when the German was an up-and-coming challenger and the Catalan was Bayern Munich manager. So they ought to have been serving up a tactical feast. But this was stale fare, a stolid spread rather than haute cuisine.
After a turgid first half, enlivened only by Hakim Ziyech’s disallowed goal and Ben Chilwell’s misjudged strike, events soon unfolded.
First there was the departure of Kevin De Bruyne on 47 minutes, turning his ankle and limping off. Then came the breakthrough. It was Mason Mount’s clever pass that set off Timo Werner and the German’s crossfield ball t hat allowed Ziyech to score for good this time. That at least prompted a response from City.
Yet City were far short of their slick, creative best. Shorn of De Bruyne, Foden took up the mantle. City, though, looked like a tired marathon runner in the final stages of a race.
Chelsea still had the best chances: Ziyech could have finished it on the hour and Werner raced through on 77 minutes, only to shoot tamely at Zack Steffen.