Does it feel different this season? Are we guilty of buying into the hype again only to have those expectations flipped upside down by a piece of catastrophic defending, VAR controversy or shambolic missed chance? Perhaps. But Manchester City will surely never have a better chance.
This was a breeze, a first leg that was as regulation and controlled as…well, every one of City’s games over the last three months. More astonishing even than their 19 consecutive victories in all competitions is that the only team to lead against City since 21 November were Cheltenham Town of League Two.
Borussia Monchengladbach were welcome Champions League opponents. They squeezed through Group B despite winning two of their six matches thanks to Inter’s inability to beat Shakhtar in their final fixture. They have not won in four Bundesliga matches, and their manager Marco Rose has already signed a deal to leave for Dortmund in the summer. To resort to hackneyed modern parlance, this was Foals against GOATs.
In Rose, Monchengladbach have the Next Big Thing in German coaching and therefore the girl all the bad guys will eventually want; Dortmund is surely only a stepping stone. Having played under Jurgen Klopp at Mainz and not retired until the age of 34 he was a relatively late starter. Fear not; in 2017 Rose was still coaching RB Salzburg’s Under-18s. Success with the first-team accelerated his ascent.
All the facets of the genre are usually present: pressing high up the pitch and quick transitions that are often blended with short passing out from the back. The full-backs attack and one of the central midfielders drops to allow it. Remind you of anyone called Jurgen?
But you have to get the ball first. Playing this Manchester City in this mood is like Chinese water torture, the drip-drip-drip-drip of their quick passing from side to side and front to back to front again enough to test the sanity of any opposition player. Monchengladbach did occasionally press Ruben Dias and Aymeric Laporte when they were able, but were more often swarmed on the edge of their own box and forced to clear the ball long. It’s the kind of suffocating constriction that ends with you celebrating safely getting the ball back to your goalkeeper before realising that’s exactly where you started.
Joao Cancelo was Manchester City’s star, in such stupendous form that you have to remind yourself that he was left on the bench 28 times last season. Cancelo seems intent on atoning for that repeated absence by playing in several positions at once and thriving in each one; he has more styles than Guardiola’s new clubwear-businesswear-smart-casual wool jacket.
Nominally picked as a left-back, there was a moment in the first half when Cancelo picked up the ball just outside the penalty area, slightly to the right of centre and drilled a shot over the bar. Had that flown in, Monchengladbach might as well have pleaded a loss on points and saved themselves the bother of a second leg. It was Cancelo’s majestic cross that allowed a second pint-sized City player in the space of four days to score a header. Cancelo repeated the trick in the second half, because he can.
It could have been more. Of course it could – it could always be more. At times Manchester City seem to play a cruel trick on the neutral spectator, labouring to score the perfect team goal. At exactly the point that their over-playing in the final third begins to frustrate and force the words ‘Just have a bloody shot’ into your internal monologue, they score it. City are scoring more and more times from inside the six-yard box, their party trick between 2017 and 2019. That’s grim news for the competition.
Every single City exit in this competition during Guardiola’s reign has come by coming off second best after a chaotic, breathless mess. Monaco and Tottenham eliminated them on away goals after two legs that saw 12 and eight goals respectively. City conceded five times against Liverpool in 2017/18. Even last season, in a one-legged quarter-final against Lyon, they had 18 shots but conceded three goals in a tremendously open contest.
There is no inherent problem in that approach; Bayern Munich won games 3-2, 7-2 and 8-2 last season. But Bayern also closed out their success with two consecutive clean sheets. Perhaps that is where City’s best hope of glory lies, a relentless, robotic submission of their opponents. There are no prizes handed out for entertainment here – this is not dressage.
If so, that also suggests that Manchester City really are better placed than ever before. Between the 4-0 last-16 first leg victory over Basel in February 2018 and the start of this season, Guardiola’s side kept five clean sheets in 22 Champions League matches; they have kept six in seven games this season. In this sensational pomp, only self-inflicted damage will derail them.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3aQeYnW
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