Pep Guardiola has branded it a final, but not the sort to which he is accustomed. Not like in 2009 or 2011 or 2023, with the glory it brought. Or even 2021, when taking Manchester City to what was then uncharted territory for them still qualified as an achievement.
Now the finality would bring only failure. Some thought City’s Champions League campaign would end in Munich on 31 May, perhaps against Bayern or Barcelona, not in Manchester in January against Brugge. City haven’t gone out in a Champions League group stage since 2012-13, their final season under Roberto Mancini. Guardiola hasn’t since he was a Barcelona player in 2000-01, when they finished below Leeds United.
Now City have backed themselves into a corner. Sitting 25th when only 24 teams advance, their fate is still in their own hands because victory over the Belgian champions would at least enable them to leapfrog them. “The question is simple,” said Guardiola. “If we don't win, we'll be out. If we win, we'll go through.”
Which, given that City are unbeaten at the Etihad Stadium in Europe since 2018, scarcely sounds an impossible task. And yet this is a side with a lone point from their last four European games, who held a 3-0 lead at home to Feyenoord and drew 3-3. Now one point will not be enough.
“We have no options – we have to win the game and if not, we're not continuing in this competition and we want to go through to give another chance to play another two games to qualify for the next stages,” added Guardiola. “So it's not a problem, it's an opportunity, a challenge.” If that was an attempt to rebrand underachievement as excitement, he has been self-flagellating. “For the reasons that we know, we are not good enough,” he said. In the wake of defeat to Paris Saint-Germain last week, he said that if City go out, they will deserve to
It would nevertheless represent a blow in many respects. They have been constants in the competition, the only club to reach at least the quarter-finals in each of the last seven seasons. Some would argue City should have won it more than once, that they have been Europe’s best team in multiple seasons. But they have been ever-presents in the latter stages, consistently good in the earlier games. Guardiola’s trio of Champions League wins puts him behind only Carlo Ancelotti in the managerial rankings. Even a manager with 12 domestic league titles to his name can be defined by this stage.
This, he argued, is bigger than him. “It's not personally for me, it's for the club and of course it would be not good,” he said. It certainly could seem the end of an era. There is the probability that former captain Kyle Walker, loaned out to AC Milan, has played his final Champions League game for the season.
This could prove the last for Kevin de Bruyne, who may wear the armband now, and the Champions League-winning skipper, Ilkay Gundogan, whose contracts expire this summer. The rebuild has begun but City’s £122m of January signings, Omar Marmoush, Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis, are ineligible on Wednesday.
Annual huge revenues from Europe have formed part of their business plan. City made €134.9m in Champions League broadcast and prize money in 2022-23. Go out now and that number would be rather lower this season. “I'm not naïve, I understand how important it is financially for the club to go through in this competition but sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't,” said Guardiola. “But of course, we want to try to go through, especially for sporting reasons.” He is yet to have the conversation with chief executive Ferran Soriano about whether an early exit would reduce his summer transfer budget.
His second biggest buy, Josko Gvardiol, joined a club who had just won the Champions League. Now they are 25th in it. He scored a glorious goal against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu in a 3-3 draw last season and was culpable for one Feyenoord scored in a 3-3 at the Etihad this season. The Croatian admitted he is unsure why City keep conceding goals in quick succession but it has been a feature of games against Sporting CP, Feyenoord and PSG.
Now City need to beat a Brugge team who are unbeaten in 20 games since AC Milan defeated them in October. Go back three seasons and City beat them 4-1 and 5-1. But that was in the old, four-team group, which City invariably won. Now they could be the biggest victims of the new structure. “I think I prefer the other one but I can also say this one is very good,” said Gvardiol. “I think they are going to keep this format so we are going to have to get used to it.”
They have one game to master it this season. It is in effect a knockout match. “In this situation, I live it many, many times,” said Guardiola. But never quite like this.
