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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Sport
Daniel Murphy

Manchester City under Pep Guardiola were always destined to be kings of Europe

Manchester City have won the treble, and what a way to do it.

The pathway was beautiful. City smashed Bayern Munich, the only German team to win the treble. They blew the kings of Europe and reigning champions Real Madrid away. In the final they defeated Inter, the only Italian team to have won the treble and by doing so ensured Manchester joined Milan as the only city to have produced two Champions League-winning clubs. Manchester United, the fierce rivals and for 24 years the only English team to have won the treble, were vanquished in the FA Cup final. The red half of Manchester will need to invest in some earplugs because their neighbours won't be quietening down any time soon.

Pep Guardiola has also made history as the first manager to win the treble twice. The first came in his first season in management at Barcelona in 2008-09 and now he has climbed the mountain once again.

Guardiola had often joked that no matter how many other trophies he won or how remarkable his achievements were, he would go down as a failure if he failed to win the Champions League.

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It would take one extremely po-faced critic to disregard all the spellbinding football City have produced over the last seven years because an incredibly difficult tournament to win was never won, but there is certainly a grain of truth to it.

No manager in world football has a club structured so specifically for him to succeed as Guardiola does at City. His close friends and colleagues arrived before him in important administrative positions to put the plans in motion and to ensure everything would be to his liking and with such perfect working conditions success was bound to follow. All that preparation and investment was in effort to clinch the game's biggest prize.

Though it may have been hard to believe it at times given the agonising exits, the final heartbreak and the almost impressive way in which City somehow transpired to get themselves eliminated in more astonishing fashion year after year, the Blues winning the Champions League was always inevitable. How could it not be?

Sheikh Mansour was in attendance in Istanbul to watch the club he owns for just the second time in a competitive match and the first in almost 13 years. It's his billions that have transformed City from a middling Premier League club to the best side in the world in 15 short years since the Abu Dhabi United Group's purchase in 2008.

Such a financial safety net has meant City have never been in danger of seeing their trajectory nose dive. They were always going to head to the very top of the game as any minor dip can be easily solved with a summer spending spree.

But it isn't just having the money, it's knowing how to spend it. In the seven years Guardiola has been in charge they have hardly put a foot wrong. While Chelsea and Manchester United have spent those years throwing vast sums of money around without any sort of plan or thought, nearly all of City's major signings have been a success.

Guardiola has fine-tuned a remarkable team that has now achieved the truly remarkable. It will be remembered forever. It's an accomplishment of the highest magnitude. One of elite coaching, of taking already talented footballers and making them even better, of beautiful football and nerves of steel.

In a way, the far-from-pretty final was a microcosm of the season at large. City looked slightly off it to start. Still capable of brilliance but unable to do so consistently. They looked disjointed, fatigued and unable to get a hold of themselves as a worthy challenger piled on the pressure. Injuries didn't help, either. But Guardiola landed on the winning formula which allowed his stars to shine through.

It would take a cold heart to watch on as a group of young men sang and danced and cried at their crowning glory and not to be delighted for them. It would take a great cynic not to acknowledge that City achieved something of profound difficulty that would never have been done with money alone.

It's an achievement of extraordinary proportions. One which will remain in the history books eternally and one thousands of supporters who have followed them from Gillingham to Kharkiv will never forget.

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