Manchester City defender Joao Cancelo insisted yesterday that winning the Champions League is not “an obligation”.
For Pep Guardiola, that is probably just as well. For all the Spaniard’s brilliance in turning City into English football’s dominant force and raising the standards required to reach the summit of the domestic game to an unimaginable high, if European success were a non-negotiable, he would, by default, be out of a job.
The trajectory of City’s continental progress under Guardiola has taken them from still feeling like top-table new boys to something approaching perennial favourites but, so far, no further. Five seasons have, in the absolute sense, returned five failures. One final, no dice.
The man who has moulded the Premier League’s all-star, all-conquering champions (defending and, almost certainly, elect) does not need reminding of that fact, nor that for the greatest coach of his generation 11 years between drinks is too long, although, of course, he still will be.
“You can ask whatever, as many times as you want,” he said on Monday. “I know how important the Champions League is.”
Guardiola’s latest attempt to deliver City’s first European title and end his own drought — two quests that have, over the course of five-and-half seasons, grown increasingly entwined — begins in earnest against Sporting in Lisbon tonight as the knockout stages get underway.
For all the criticism that the group phase has become little more than a formality for Europe’s biggest clubs, there is a freshness to the last-16 line-up, with only half of the teams having reached the same stage a year ago.
Barcelona’s absence has been most noted and most mocked, but Borussia Dortmund and Porto, near-fixtures with four knockout appearances in the last five seasons, are missing, too. Meanwhile, French champions Lille have not gone this far since 2007; Sporting since 2009; and even Inter Milan not for a decade. RB Salzburg never have.
Like Sporting, Lille, Inter and Salzburg all face daunting tasks, meeting Chelsea, Liverpool and Bayern Munich respectively, surely the trio of greatest threat to Guardiola’s aspirations.
City may feel hoisted by their own petard, the goalposts unfairly moved on what constitutes a successful season thanks to the ease with which they have scampered clear of Liverpool and Chelsea in the Premier League, but a premature conclusion to what was supposed to be a gripping title race might yet be to the benefit of all three come the business end.
Real Madrid and PSG might demand inclusion in that elite bracket of favourites were it not for the mitigation that only one can even reach the quarter-finals. They will put their Kylian Mbappe tug-of-war aside to briefly engage in some football in the one true heavyweight clash of a last-16 draw (or redraw) that kept most of the leading protagonists apart.
The names of Manchester United and Atletico Madrid warrant similar billing, but the substance does not. Diego Simeone’s side are fifth in La Liga, 15 points adrift of their city rivals in defence of their title, while the fact that Ralf Rangnick yesterday described qualifying for next season’s Champions League as the best his side could hope for between now and the summer told you all you needed to know; he did not mean by winning this one.
If there is room for such thing as a dark horse, it will likely come from one of the two remaining ties: a Juventus buoyed by the January arrival of Dusan Vlahovic face Villarreal or Ajax, who play Benfica and are dreaming of a 2019-esque run after blitzing through the group stage with a perfect six wins out of six.
