Manchester City’s players have never given the impression of being in love with the Champions League, but those of them that bothered to watch Bayern play Juventus on Wednesday night got an interesting preview of how their lives are about to change.
In the first half Bayern were almost bad enough to remind you of City. Sloppy and sluggish, exposed by Juventus’s determined pressing game, the German champions were sleepwalking towards humiliation.
There was only one man among them whose behaviour suggested that he grasped the full horror of what defeat would mean and that was their manager, Pep Guardiola.
Guardiola is the most demonstrative coach in the game, and his comportment on the touchline is more reminiscent of an orchestral maestro than a football manager. He spends nearly the whole match on the sideline, making constant micro-adjustments. Even when things are going well he looks elegantly fretful.
Emotions boiling
On Wednesday night, things weren’t going well at all. Over the course of the first half, Guardiola’s frustration built into an operatic crescendo of rage. You could see that most of his ranting and raving went unnoticed by the players. The performance went beyond an angry manager angrily trying to influence the game. It looked more like a guy who had to vent the emotions boiling up inside him, because if he tried to keep them in his head might explode.
Speaking at half-time, Franz Beckenbauer expressed pity for the Bayern players and suggested Guardiola looked like he was about to “neuter” them. Afterwards, Thomas Müller confirmed that Beckenbauer was not far wrong. “He told us he’d cut our balls off.”
There were a number of reasons why Bayern came back to win the tie. The most obvious was that Juventus got tired, and couldn’t keep up the pressure that had worked so well in the first half. Another reason is that Guardiola tried to affect the game with proactive changes. The two Bayern goals in extra time were scored by his substitutes.
But you cannot discount the impact of Guardiola’s emotional urgency. He knew there was a great deal at stake for him personally. For most of those players, there would always be next season. For Guardiola, this was it: lose to Juventus and his time at Bayern would be considered a failure. Guardiola’s great success on Wednesday was to transmit this urgency to his players, who fought back like men whose reputations were on the line.
This competitive urgency is the quality that is most obviously missing from Guardiola’s next team, Manchester City. Yesterday’s defeat to Manchester United confirmed a worrying trend: the tougher the opponent, the worse City play. Of 13 matches against the other clubs in the Premier League’s top nine, they have lost nine and won just one.
Oddly for a superclub that is bankrolled by Gulf royalty and directed by a couple of former Barcelona hotshots, City have found themselves making do with a host of players who are obviously deficient in some key department.
Martin Demichelis will be remembered as the man whose mistake decided the game, but you also have to wonder how a club with City’s resources have ended up relying on a defender like Demichelis. When your number one defender is Vincent Kompany then squad defenders like Demichelis are going to get games.
It’s not simply a question of lacking quality in reserve. Too many of City’s former matchwinners have lost what once made them special.
Yaya Toure has lost the athleticism that once allowed him to bend Premier League matches to his will. Toure often complains that he doesn’t get the credit he deserves. It would be too much to say Toure is only in the team on reputation – it’s also because City don’t have anyone better.
All throughout the team you see this pattern of incomplete players. Fernando and Fernandinho are strong, but obstinately uncreative. David Silva is skilful and Jesus Navas is fast, but each is capable of going months (or years in Navas’ case) without scoring.
Even Sergio Agüero misses too many games. City’s best striker has played only 65 per cent as many minutes as Jamie Vardy has played for Leicester, with obvious implications for the league table.
Of City’s established first-teamers, perhaps only Raheem Sterling and Kevin de Bruyne look like potential Guardiola players. So the job the new coach faces at City is radically different from anything he has done before.
At Barcelona, he took over a squad that, though demoralised and directionless, nevertheless already included most of the players he would rely on throughout his four seasons in the job. At Bayern, he took over an all-conquering side, and challenged them to learn how to play the game in a completely new way.
At City, he will take over a team that has effectively ceased to be. For the first time he has to build a side virtually from scratch. Starting from such a low base is probably going to be tough on Guardiola’s nerves. For the few City players who survive the coming cull, life is about to get a lot less comfortable.
