From Athens humiliation to beating the kings of European football
Can you stake a claim to the top of the podium without beating the best? It’s an intriguing question. But when it comes to European football, there’s one easy litmus test. Not every team that beats Real Madrid is a great side, but to be considered one, you need to get past the 13-time champions of Europe.
If Manchester City do go on to become a European superpower, they will look back on this 4–2 aggregate victory over Real as a significant first step. This Real team, though they outlasted a misfiring Barcelona to clinch La Liga after the post-Covid restart, isn’t a particularly special vintage. Since winning the third of their consecutive Champions League titles in Kiev in 2018, Real have lost Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus. Gareth Bale, whose spectacular overhead kick turned that final against Liverpool, has been marginalized. Other cornerstones of that squad like Luka Modric and Toni Kroos are long past their best.
But Real still have that aura, especially on the European stage, and even more so with Zinedine Zidane on the touchline giving instructions. Zidane is one of the harder modern-day coaches to fathom. Tactically, he isn’t wedded to a system like Pep Guardiola or Jurgen Klopp. You can watch Real play over a series of matches and be unable to say that there’s a coherent playing philosophy.
What Zidane does do, however, is command respect. He manages a dressing room full of marquee names, and is ruthless when it comes to sidelining those he feels lack the adaptability or attitude to be part of his teams. Along with Bale, Colombia’s James Rodriguez, so coveted after the 2014 World Cup, has also been pushed beyond the periphery.
Coming into this season, Zidane’s record in Europe brooked no argument. Not only had he won three straight finals (2016–18), he had lost only four times in 33 games, winning 22 of them. One of those defeats, to Tottenham Hotspur in the group stage in 2017–18, was largely inconsequential, while two of the others — to Atletico Madrid in 2016–17 and Juventus a year later — came after convincing 3–0 victories in the first leg.
In short, Zidane the coach had never been mastered in European competition. But this season, after a group-stage loss to Paris Saint-Germain, Real were forced to play one of the group toppers in the last 16. And with no Ronaldo to come up trumps at pivotal moments, Real were no match for Guardiola and City. The 2–1 victories home and away didn’t flatter the Manchester club, who might have won by more had their finishing been more clinical.
City may have surrendered their English Premier League title to Liverpool, but if you’re a fan, these are giddy times. The club, whose two-season ban from the Champions League was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), have already acted decisively in the transfer market, bringing in Nathan Ake (from relegated Bournemouth) and Ferran Torres (Valencia). There will doubtless be more arrivals before the transfer window closes in early October.
But even more exciting than the prospect of winning back the English title is the maturity that City showed on the biggest European stage. It also showed how much Guardiola the coach— for all the comparisons with Johan Cruyff, his coaching reference point and mentor — has been influenced by the greatest humiliation he suffered as a player.
He was 23 when he lined up at the base of Barcelona’s midfield in the Champions League final against AC Milan in Athens. Cruyff, his idol, was the coach, and diplomacy wasn’t in his blood.
“Barcelona are favourites,” said Cruyff in the build-up to the match. “We’re more complete, competitive and experienced than at Wembley [where they won the 1992 final]. Milan are nothing out of this world. They base their game on defence; we base ours on attack.”
It may have sounded arrogant, but there was nothing factually wrong with what he said. Milan had won Serie A that season scoring a pitiful 36 goals in 34 games. Barcelona had edged out Deportivo La Coruna on goal difference to win La Liga. In their 38 games, they had scored 91 goals and conceded 42.
Before the Barcelona players left the dressing room, Cruyff had another message for them. This one was even more concise — “You’re better than them, you’re going to win.”
They didn’t. This was not the Milan of Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard and Marco van Basten, with Arrigo Sacchi as coach, that had won the European Cup in 1989 and 1990. Under Fabio Capello, Milan became even harder to beat — they conceded just 15 goals in Serie A that season — but less easy on the eye despite the wealth of talent in their ranks.
Sacchi’s Milan had transformed a safety-first Italian league by pressing higher up the pitch to win the ball back. It wasn’t the relentless harrying you see from Klopp’s teams or the more position-based pressing favoured by Guardiola, but it was the first time since the Dutch masters of the 1970s that such tactics had come back into vogue.
Under Fabio Capello, Milan tended to press more in their own half. With Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta both suspended for the final, and facing a Barcelona forward line that had Romario and Hristo Stoichkov — both of whom would excel in the World Cup a few weeks later — most neutral observers expected Milan to struggle.
Instead, they pressed Barcelona so hard they steamrollered them. Three of the four Milan goals that evening came from Barcelona conceding possession in their own half. The finest example was Dejan ‘The Genius’ Savicevic winning possession off Miguel Angel Nadal — Rafael’s uncle — on the right wing before scoring with the most precise lob imaginable.
Guardiola and Txiki Begiristain, who started on the left wing that day, never forgot. Begiristain is now Manchester City’s Director of Football, and the influence of that long-ago night was all too evident as Real were harried into mistake after mistake in front of the empty seats at the Etihad Stadium.
Rafael Varane was culpable for both goals, but time after time, a blanket of blue City shirts would be in the final third cutting out escape routes for Thibaut Courtois and his defenders. Gabriel Jesus stole the ball for Raheem Sterling’s opener, and he was again on Varane’s shoulder to pounce on the mistake for the second — just as Savicevic had done to Nadal all those years ago.
There is so much more to City than aggressive pressing. Kevin de Bruyne, as he tends to be in every game he plays, was the best player on the pitch. Madrid’s aging midfield stars couldn’t even get near enough to him to smell the aftershave. Jesus and Sterling ran the channels relentlessly, and Phil Foden showed enough glimpses of why he’s going to be English football’s next talismanic figure.
With the exception of Karim Benzema, who was as excellent as he has been most of this season, it was hard to think of a Real player who would have enhanced City’s playing group. Guardiola’s team were quicker to the ball, used it more purposefully, and hunted it back with a vigour that Real simply didn’t have.
If they get past Lyon in the quarterfinal next week, which they should, City will come up against either Bayern Munich or Barcelona/Napoli in the semifinal. Barcelona, who enjoyed their best period under Guardiola, are currently a mess, but Bayern have revived dramatically under Hansi Flick. Whoever they face, City will once again have to overcome one of the European game’s aristocrats and the aura they carry into big games.
After quarterfinal exits to Liverpool and Spurs in the last two seasons, it’s hard to escape the feeling that this is City’s time. Of the teams left in the competition (not counting Chelsea, whose chances of overturning a 3–0 deficit in Munich are next to nil), seven have never won the biggest trophy in club football. If Guardiola can chart a path past one of the two teams that have — Barcelona and Bayern — City could just be the first new name on the trophy since Chelsea won it in 2012.
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