Sometimes it is important not to forget that, at the end of the day, in professional and top-performance sports, everything is measured by victories. Manchester City had forgotten about them because, somehow, they also couldn’t find their football. Devastated by the absences of several of its pillars, the champion of the last four Premier Leagues has been immersed in a crisis that is difficult to assume for two months. So at that point winning is more than just a desire. It is a medicine, a restorative. And then there will be time to talk about football, ideas or styles. City finally won, they did so in Leicester (0-2) against a rival in the relegation zone who surpassed them for long stretches of the game and against whom they folded incapable of managing the ball. City struggled to finally get relief with the three points. “We needed to win. “We all needed it,” Guardiola said after the game.
0
Jakub Stolarczyk, Victor Kristiansen, Jannik Vestergaard, Conor Coady (Caleb Okoli, min. 84), James Justin (Hamza Choudhury, min. 69), Bilal El Khannouss, Facundo Buonanotte, Stephy Mavididi (Will Alves, min. 89), Harry Winks (Patson Daka, min. 84), Boubakary Soumaré and Jamie Vardy
2
Stefan Ortega, Rico Lewis, Josko Gvardiol, Nathan Aké (Kyle Walker, min. 69), Manuel Akanji, Savinho, Kevin De Bruyne, Mateo Kovacic, Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden (James McAtee, min. 65) and Erling Haaland
Goals
0-1 min. 20: Sávio. 0-2 min. 73: Erling Braut Haaland
Referee Michael Oliver
yellow cards
Boubakary Soumare (min. 55), Bilal El Khannous (min. 64), Stefan Ortega (min. 77)
It would be too long to detail all the problems that plague the team coached by the award-winning Catalan strategist, but five minutes into the game one very obvious one already emerged: the team tries to apply the lesson it has learned well, it tries to circulate the ball with three defenders in the background and two pivots in front, he places his interior players (a facet in which the coach recovered Kevin de Bruyne, a shadow of what he was) and opens the field with two men in the limelight. From there he looks for his positional game and opens passing lines. But in Leicester he did it without rhythm, without the ability to move and surprise the rival to generate advantages. Without a fang, too, to recover the ball when it split. This is where City’s sins begin, for which the season demands a prolonged act of contrition.
It happened that he unexpectedly reached the goal midway through the first half, a detail that always helps to strengthen oneself. On this occasion it was invigorated against its nature, but in an exercise of pragmatism the team applied itself to managing the advantage without the ball. Savinho scored after an error by the local goalkeeper and the goal seemed like a treasure. He did it amidst great suffering because Leicester, in the hands of Ruud van Nistelrooy, has a few gregarious players among whom Jamie Vardy survives as a remnant of the 2016 champion team, but he has two little gems who make him play football, the Argentine Facundo Buonanotte and, above all, the Belgian-Moroccan Bilal El Khannous. Both are 2004 litters, twenty-somethings who will make people talk.
From their two players, Leicester showed that City’s defense had cracks. It seemed like it, but it didn’t materialize. He lacked success in the area to punish a team in the midst of an identity crisis that was struggling to survive, which sank in front of its goalkeeper as if it were a small club. City’s display was not great, nor is it what it needs most now.
Akanji took a shot from local defender Justin under his goal. Nor was Vardy’s effort without a prize and the couple of virgueros in the end did not go beyond the aesthetic. Pick and shovel, City waited for their moment, which came when Leicester began to falter due to their wasted effort. With just over a quarter of an hour left, the unexpected McAtee, a secondary player from Guardiola’s squad, cleaned up a play after progressing down the right wing. The action found continuity on the opposite flank, from where Savinho found the head of Haaland, who shot into the net for the second time in the last seven games, and for the first time in the last four. The burly Norwegian smiled.
At the end of the match, Guardiola hugged McAtee like there was no tomorrow. “Sometimes in the situation we are experiencing you have the feeling that responsibility must be given to the veterans and not to the young people. But sometimes veterans have much more pressure than them, who have nothing to defend. They simply want to conquer the world,” explained the coach. Perhaps City have postponed a complicated renewal longer than they should. It is never easy to retire a winning team. But everything indicates that Guardiola is in it. And the people are with him. He left Leicester cheered by his team, victorious in his 500th game with the team (355 wins, 73 draws, 72 losses… 18 titles). The architect of City looks towards the future, but he also focuses on the past and from there finds guarantees: “When we turn this situation around we will not forget this period. We will value more what we have done before and what we are going to do in the future.”
