There was some talk after Manchester City’s win against Newcastle United last Saturday that City’s players had been inspired, freed from their shackles and generally reinvigorated by the club’s recent legal victory in a tribunal hearing over certain time-specific aspects of financial regulation.
Could this be true? Are we underestimating the effect of these things? Did the pitch mics at the Bernabéu pick up Nico González in the pre-match huddle saying: “Lads, we’ve all absorbed the news about the related third-party transaction rules being declared improper. I am as a consequence bang up for this.” Did the cameras detect Savinho whispering: “Guys, we are now free to seek our own definition of market value. This commercial potential is hugely energising. Hit me early over the top.”
Related: ‘We’ve been the worst this year,’ Guardiola says after Real Madrid thrashing
There will be suggestions that sport doesn’t work like this. Some will object that the logic doesn’t stand up because Newcastle’s players should also have been running on pure, uncut sovereign fund deregulation vibes, equal partners in a joyful 5-5 draw. Who can really say for sure? In the end, all that really seemed certain at the Bernabéu was that City’s Big Tribunal Energy had mysteriously dissipated.
English champion teams have found themselves outmatched in this competition before. Although perhaps never quite like this. The likes of Blackburn at least had the good manners to look confused, angry, ready to do someone. City collapsed like a rain-sodden cardboard box, a sporting entity with no resistance, no fibre. A 3-1 defeat really could have been anything at all.
At the end of which three things seem true. First, the current iteration of this great team is now done. This was its last dance, a chance to go down, if not with all guns blazing, then with all guns gently ticking over in search of forensic incision.
Instead, City were meek in a way that still comes as a shock to those yet to see it in the flesh. In Spain the buildup to this game was dominated by a debate over the precise meaning of a key English swearword, with linguists and native speakers consulted on the nuances of Jude Bellingham’s controversial red card F-word. Pep Guardiola’s team have at least offered some clarity. People of Spain, watch the highlights back. This is what completely fucked looks like.
The second certainty is that City will be back. This is not the end, because the end cannot exist now for clubs with these resources. Not only will the project endure, the project is already clearing new lines of finance via its elite tribunal game. Defeat in Spain, a single bad season. These losses can be absorbed when the sport is stratified as never before.
The third thing relates to Guardiola himself, who once again delivered his public response like a man strapped to a wheel of pain, unable to process defeat, failure or elements beyond his reach. City will rebuild. But does Guardiola really have the will and the capacity to curate another era?
With this in mind it is necessary to emphasise just how bad City were in Madrid. The numbers don’t get near it. By the end, City had 12 shots to Madrid’s 15. They shaded the possession and passing. In reality, this was a night of humiliation for Guardiola, his team olé’d about the place, rondo’d off, treated like cones. As early as the 20th minute it was startling Madrid were still only 1-0 up as those white shapes romped around the empty spaces, the crowd gushing idly over its favourites, clapping Raúl Asencio like proud parents as he completed a back pass. Kylian Mbappé barely broke into a sprint while compiling his hat-trick. But then, why sprint when the space is already there?
None of this is unusual in outline. Things fall apart. Great teams decay and regenerate. Play enough times and you will eventually lose. The wider question for a manager who is obsessed with legacy and the due rewards of history is how much did Guardiola’s own errors contribute to this? And how successful has his time at City been when it comes to the greatest prize?
“We have achieved something unique in our country and in Europe, we have won once and we have been there many times,” Guardiola told Spanish TV. It is a generous definition of unique. There are those in Spain who like to dwell on Guardiola’s relative failures in Europe given the scale of resources at his disposal.
His 2011 Barcelona team are still the greatest of the century, a total re-gear of what it meant and felt and looked like to dominate elite football. But it does seem odd now that the creator of that team has won the competition once in 14 seasons since, reaching two finals, losing to Spurs, Monaco, Chelsea and others along the way. This despite having total patronage for his vision, the greatest riches, best facilities and most elite intelligence ever made available to any manager.
The current season is Guardiola’s worst in European competition. The last seven games have brought five defeats and one win against Club Brugge. There has been for the first time a sense of being behind the curve. Paris Saint-Germain tore City apart playing like a classic Pep team. Madrid did the same playing like a modern iteration, deep possession and rapid attacks.
Guardiola has also made micro-mistakes. Abdukodir Khusanov’s deployment out of position at right-back against Mbappé-Vinícius felt like a kind of hazing ritual. What was meant to happen here? Khusanov, who has never played in a game like this, would suddenly discover miracle innate right-back capacities?
Another surprise at the start was the absence of the injured Erling Haaland, ruling out an emotional reunion with Antonio Rüdiger, his defensive spirit animal, the centre-half who completes him (last season’s meeting in Madrid was basically an extended man-hug, the 90-minute supercut of the Heathrow arrivals scene in Love Actually).
Haaland was missed for more than his goals. He is also an angry, rage-fuelled leader. But how is it that Guardiola has allowed his team to become so reliant on a single player in every position, let alone a one-shot goalscorer? How is it he seems to have so few leaders, but plenty of fearful avatars of the blueprint? The great midfield obsessive has neglected his key area, failing to add in the summer when it must have been clear this was required. Kevin De Bruyne is still the only approved element of spontaneity, even in his new slower gear, still gamely chugging about like a routemaster bus on its way to a wedding. Nobody in the squad comes close to replicating those attributes.
Asked if he has the will to drive this process, goaded a little by the home crowd chanting “Guardiola stay”, he answered: “Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes. I want to continue.” It will be fascinating to watch this happen. Nobody really knows how Guardiola sees his future. Contract extensions are ultimately meaningless. The outcome of City’s financial charges will have a huge bearing. Which way will Pep jump?
Rebuilding a team on this scale is an exhausting process. History suggests even great managers tend to get 10 years running ahead of the tide. Guardiola has been doing it for close to 20. His cultural impact is all pervading, to the extent it has become a self-fuelling competitive advantage as clubs appoint managers on the basis of their pencil-sketch similarity to the master.
Perhaps that cycle has finally completed itself. Maybe Guardiola’s final hybrid shape is the all-conquering version of big men at the back, a big quick man up front and a midfield of core technical mastery.
If so it feels fitting that team should play out their own farewell against Madrid, the celebrity counterpart to Guardiola’s more orderly collectivism, with their half a billion euros front four, with Carlo Ancelotti out there striding his touchline looking like a renaissance duke persuaded reluctantly to star in an advert for alpaca wool tailored overcoats.
City and Madrid can both continue to present themselves as insider-outsiders, victims of the tyranny of hoi polloi, forced to obey rules made by others, wings constantly clipped. The project will endure and refresh, with or without the architect of its most beautiful moments. All angles considered, that tribunal victory probably is the most significant result of the week.
