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So much for one of the immutable laws of football. Teams with Rodri in them didn’t lose. Teams deprived of Rodri tended to lose. He was the Spanish superman, the personal guarantee of success; not so much a lucky omen as a relentless talisman. And then Rodri went off at half-time in the final of Euro 2024 with the game goalless, his replacement Martin Zubimendi played better and Spain won. Then Manchester City prevailed in the Community Shield with a midfield trio that contained the rookies Nico O’Reilly and James McAtee.
Then came the hat-trick: the sort of match City lost last season against a club, in Chelsea, with a £280m trio of defensive midfielders starting. City had none; or not by trade, anyway. But they had Mateo Kovacic, the Chelsea cast-off, the No 8 on his back an indication of his preferred role. And they had Kovacic, collecting Wesley Fofana’s stray clearance and, in a wonderfully symbolic moment, sashaying his way past the £222m double act of Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez to curl in a shot from 20 yards and complete a 2-0 win. These things happen to Chelsea, the indictments of their spending.
But these things didn’t happen for City: the wins without Rodri. Last season, when the Spaniard was suspended, Kovacic had perhaps his two poorest games for City, while anchoring the midfield at Wolves and Arsenal. City lost both, just as they lost at Aston Villa without Rodri, as they were knocked out of the Carabao Cup at Newcastle without him. They won five games without Rodri in the whole campaign: two against Luton, one apiece against Young Boys of Bern, Red Star Belgrade and Huddersfield. It was almost two years, since the 6-3 defeat of Manchester United, that City had beaten anyone resembling elite opponents without Rodri at least making a cameo. And that was when they still had Ilkay Gundogan.
Perhaps City have finally found a cure for their acute case of Rodri-dependencia. “Rodri is massively important for us, but last season was the first for Kova and this is the second one and we have another alternative,” Guardiola said. “It’s important to win without Rodri; he’s so necessary, he’s really, really important. When someone says City cannot do without him we break all the opinions and records and we broke this one as well. We are wishing him back as quickly as possible but in the meantime it’s a question of surviving this period.”
And now Kovacic has emerged as Plan B, when the strategy seemed of simply hoping Rodri was indestructible. After the failure of Kalvin Phillips’ time in Manchester and missing out on Declan Rice, choosing not to go in for Bruno Guimaraes, even at £100m, threatened to look both costly and odd. Then came Kovacic’s triumph at Stamford Bridge. He was too modest to proclaim himself a Rodri clone. “I play today some kind of his role,” he said. “But we are always missing Rodri because he is, if not the best player, one of the best in the world.”
Kovacic is different but he lends an assurance in possession, completing 62 of his 64 passes, and ability to keep the ball with opponents around him. A total of six tackles was more atypical. The Croatian has a tenacity but he lacks Rodri’s physical presence. By his own admission, he is not particularly comfortable as a lone anchorman in midfield. He is more accustomed to dovetailing with a ball-winner, whether N’Golo Kante at Chelsea, Marcelo Brozovic for Croatia or Rodri.
Guardiola’s tribute to him began with an earlier generation of Kovacics. “His quality, most qualities come from his mum and dad,” he said. “They gave an unbelievable human being. He’s a top-class person. He is incredibly loved and he is massively important in our group. He adapts really well last season and he’s an experienced player. When you play [for Real] Madrid, Chelsea, for us, [for the] Croatia national team for so many games, you have to be something special.”
What followed illustrated Chelsea’s wastefulness in discarding a 2021 Champions League winner and their 2019-20 player of the year. “It was not easy to come here because he was so attached to Chelsea,” Guardiola said. “He talks massively high about Chelsea. He comes here and performs and then a fantastic goal. The goal is his biggest quality, when he can drive with the ball and attack the last lines. He is scary with the ball when under pressure. He makes consistency. We need him, without Rodri, we need all the squad as fit as possible.”
And some of their rivals’ hopes for deposing City had rested on those two words: without Rodri. If a footballer who had played 172 of a possible 190 league games since joining them suffered a significant injury, perhaps the advantage would shift elsewhere. As it is, Rodri is expected back soon. He may well be the outstanding footballer in the league. But if Kovacic carries on playing as he did at Stamford Bridge, he might not be the most indispensable or irreplaceable any more.
