Manchester City’s first European title is unlikely to be their last.
A peek under the bonnet of the sky blue juggernaut should be enough to send shivers down the spine of those would-be rivals. This is a club in rude health far beyond the first team and carries the look of one that can dominate for a decade in the same way their city rivals once did.
“A ruthless winning machine,” one Premier League director said of City’s set-up when asked by i – and he wasn’t talking about the first team that has just won 20 out of its last 24 games. In recruitment, insights, data science and youth football they are at or near the top of the class.
Take the Academy set-up. Before making history in Istanbul, they had already done it in east Manchester thanks, in part, to Ben Wilkinson and Bryan Barry-Murphy.
Neither Wilkinson, the club’s under-18 head coach, nor former lower-league journeyman midfielder Barry-Murphy, the under-23 coach recruited from Rochdale, are household names but they are highly regarded in the City Group set-up for marrying the need to coach their young charges to fit the template developed by Pep Guardiola with a winning mentality.
City won both the regional and national under-18 title and their Elite Development Squad – the club’s under-23 team – won the Premier League 2. It is the first time a club has ever held all the underage titles and won the Premier League simultaneously.
Insiders say the key to their success has been the structure put in place around the Academy. They point to a long-running partnership with St Bede’s school which aims to develop well-rounded individuals and has helped the progress of Phil Foden and this year’s break-out star Rico Lewis.
There are others waiting in the wings. Callum Doyle, just 19, and 20-year-old James McAtee are both expected to join the senior squad in pre-season after excelling on loan in the Championship with Coventry and Sheffield United respectively.
The benefit of this world class set-up is two-fold. As well as a steady stream of talent that Guardiola is actually minded to trust – look at Lewis and fellow Academy graduate Cole Palmer’s impact in key moments this season – they are also able to generate income from player sales.
For all the talk of putting an asterisk next to the treble – and 115 Financial Fair Play charges are inevitably part of the conversation when assessing their legacy – no-one should be in any doubt that the club have utilised their vast resources well.
Ask football insiders who is responsible for building City’s solid foundations and the answer is almost unanimous. Director of football Txiki Begiristain is the visionary recruited from Barcelona in 2012 who mapped out the plan for world dominance, recruited Guardiola and continues to make the crucial calls.
The club’s most recent transfer window is a case in point. Despite winning the Premier League in 2022, the club’s power brokers met for a post-season review intent on a sober analysis of where they came up short in Europe.
Guardiola’s view was that as painful as the Champions League exit in Madrid had been, it signified progress for City. They had dominated for most of the two legs against a traditional European super power but he agreed with others who felt a renewal was required.
The signing of Erling Haaland meant a different approach was required but Guardiola had not forgotten that City almost slipped in the title race when defensive injuries forced them to field Fernandiho at centre-back.
Begristain’s solution was a player no other elite club was prepared to take a punt on: Manuel Akanji. The Borussia Dortmund defender was 27, viewed as a competent Bundesliga performer but hardly on the radar of their Premier League title rivals.
Begristain and Guardiola saw it differently, digging into the data to identify a player comfortable with the ball at his feet but – crucially – the right sort of character to fit into one of the most fluent systems in football. At just £13m, has there been a better signing this season?
The structure put in place by their Catalan director of football is there to withstand any external shocks but it is surely the exit of Guardiola that they fear the most.
The City manager is a generational genius who shows few signs of slowing down. While he joked that he didn’t want to talk about next season when asked if Saturday’s win was the beginning of a dynasty, the cogs will already be whirring. His tactical innovations have contributed to a club that look almost unbeatable.
But there are well-sourced suggestions that he may look for another challenge in 2026, when his contract expires. The rest of the Premier League will discreetly hope that is the case, banking on the club’s air of inevitability disappearing with him.
Given the sheer scale of City’s winning machine that may be a forlorn hope.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/4Mm8lUT
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