Real Madrid are European champions, yet in that first half at the Etihad on Wednesday, they were outclassed to an almost incomprehensible degree. Every Manchester City outfielder bar Rúben Dias had a shot; Madrid managed one in total. So discombobulating was the ferocity of City’s press that Madrid completed only 13 passes in the first 15 minutes. It was 2-0 at half-time and could have been five. City played with such pace and precision – against a European grandee – that the only appropriate response was awe.
Yet in mid-January, as City lost to Manchester United at Old Trafford, it seemed reasonable to suggest that this was not one of Pep Guardiola’s better sides, that with United rising City could no longer take supremacy for granted in Manchester. Four months on, with only United and Internazionale standing between City and the second treble in English football history – the 10th anywhere in Europe – such prognostications look a little silly.
But they were valid at the time. City had just dropped points at home to Frank Lampard’s Everton. They had gone out of the Carabao Cup to a Southampton side managed by Nathan Jones, Quadruple Denier. The following Thursday, City found themselves 2-0 down to Tottenham at half-time, before coming back to win 4-2. For all their firepower, there was an unfamiliar defensive vulnerability to them. That second-half comeback meant that, at the halfway stage of the season, City had 42 points, having scored 50 and conceded 20, on course for their third-best goals scored tally under Guardiola but their second-worst points total and their poorest goals against record.
The reason was not hard to identify. Guardiola, determined to counter the counter, has always prioritised control but Erling Haaland thrives on balls played forward quickly. By going more direct to make best use of his pace, City were rendered more open. Getting the balance right proved tricky. As early as the Community Shield, when he touched the ball only 16 times, it was clear that Haaland was making dangerous runs that were not being utilised.
At Old Trafford, Haaland touched the ball only 19 times; in City’s 2-0 win in the equivalent game the previous season, the fewest touches one of their players had registered was Ilkay Gündogan with 66. How could you control a game in the way Guardiola desires if one player’s direct involvement in the maintenance of possession is so limited? This seemed a significant incompatibility.
But you don’t have to be Harry Lime in The Third Man to believe that friction can be creative. Lionel Messi never quite fitted Guardiola’s system at Barcelona, chafed always against the demands that he press and yet was the most important player in one of the greatest sides of all time.
Haaland, similarly, is grit in the oyster. He is the sort of lethal finisher City have lacked: should it ever be needed, they can now win games with a half-chance, whereas previously it felt that they had to dominate to be successful. More than anything, his size means that teams cannot simply sit deep against City – as, say, Paris Saint-Germain did in the Parc des Princes last season, quite happy to let City launch crosses from deep at Phil Foden; no one would risk doing that against Haaland.
Once a balance was achieved, City’s dominance has been extraordinary. Since losing to Tottenham on 5 February, City have played 23 games, in which they have been behind for a total of 10 minutes. However you assess the degree of choking involved in Arsenal’s run-in, the fact is that a team that win 11 games in a row are very hard to stop.
Unless something wholly unexpected happens over the coming week, City will win a fifth Premier League in six seasons. England isn’t yet in quite the same monopoly situation as France or Germany, but the sense is understandably growing that the league is not where City and Guardiola are to be judged. This will not be City’s best league season under Guardiola for points won, goals scored or goals conceded but, even allowing for the understandable wrinkles while Haaland’s integration was managed, none of that matters besides the possibility of a treble. For City, the Champions League remains the Grail. Win that and, whatever happens in the FA Cup final against United, this would be Guardiola’s greatest season in England, the greatest season in the history of Manchester City.
How that measures against other great sides is harder to say (even before the necessary caveats about the source of City’s wealth and the 115 charges of financial irregularity they face). When United won the treble in 1998-99, it was only the fourth achieved, and the first time an English side had been European champions for 14 years; it felt harder won. Drama and novelty are elements in the construction of greatness, at least in terms of achieving more than respect; so too is a sense of defying odds, but that is a difficult image to strike when, at least according to the latest Deloitte report into football finance, you’re the richest club in the world. City may be about to win a treble in the opposite way to United, with supreme authority but almost no drama.
Would this City beat Guardiola’s great Barcelona? It’s arguable, but that Barça came with the shock of the new, sweeping away the era of attrition, the years of José Mourinho, Rafa Benítez and Greece. City may be a development of that but for all the tweaks, such as John Stones stepping into midfield, they are not radical in the way that Barça were. They may be doing it better, but they are not making it new. And although City remain obviously a Guardiola side, they are not such a pure example of Guardiolismo as, say, City 2017-18, never mind Barça 2010-11. Evolution has meant compromise, none greater than the addition of Haaland.
It may be that it is that step towards the mainstream that finally brings City the European success they have craved, that at last delivers Guardiola, one of the few truly revolutionary coaches, his third Champions League.
He is an all-time great and this may be his best ever side. But City are not yet loved.
