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City’s eyes turn to securing biggest prize

Sergio Aguero scoring against Crystal Palace at the weekend. (Image: PA Wire) Expand

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Sergio Aguero scoring against Crystal Palace at the weekend. (Image: PA Wire)

Sergio Aguero scoring against Crystal Palace at the weekend. (Image: PA Wire)

Sergio Aguero scoring against Crystal Palace at the weekend. (Image: PA Wire)

John Aizlewood

It is telling, but hardly surprising, that at the very moment Manchester City as good as confirmed their Premier League title, manager Pep Guardiola’s thoughts turned not to what they had surely won, but to what they could also win: the Champions League.

Guardiola took Barcelona to two Champions League titles, but under him City had not progressed beyond the quarter-final stage until this season. A rum concoction of hubris, surreal team selection, poor quality refereeing and sheer bad luck meant they fell to Monaco in the round of 16 and Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Olympique Lyonnais in those quarter-finals.

They will never have a better opportunity to make the final. A spectacular second half-performance at the Parc des Princes meant that City begin tomorrow’s return fixture a goal to the good.

Publicly – and, surely, privately – Guardiola is taking nothing for granted.

“We’ve got to progress from a semi-final of the Champions League to reach the final for the first time. We have to do our job on Tuesday and make an almost perfect performance to do it,” he said.

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“Winning one title already, close to another and playing another ‘final’ on Tuesday. It has been exceptional [this season].

“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the last four weeks ahead of us but the season has been extraordinary already.”

 With the domestic title as good as secured before City kicked off at Crystal Palace, Guardiola selected what, by City’s unique standards, was a shadow XI, with eight changes to the team that started in Paris. When Mauricio Pochettino marches his troops into the Etihad, they will almost certainly not be met by Benjamin Mendy, Nathan Ake, Gabriel Jesus and even Raheem Sterling, for whom this season has demanded patience as City’s evolution has bypassed them.

As Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson wisely noted after Saturday’s game, keeping 20 to 25 players on board is, perhaps, Guardiola’s trickiest task.

As Guardiola surely suspected, as well as hoped, City were so comfortable that substitutes Kyle Walker, Ruben Dias, Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez and Phil Foden spent the afternoon cheering their colleagues on.

They were a risk Guardiola did not need to take.

Sergio Aguero scored a beautiful first goal to remind us what City will miss, while Ferran Torres scored a messier second.

Aguero, who says he is free from any knee problems heading into his final month at the club before leaving as a free agent. was quick to pitch for a starting role on Tuesday (“I am ready, I want to play every game”), but he may, once again, be benched, and used in an emergency.

Intriguingly, Guardiola focused on the other end of the pitch, where Neymar, Kylian Mbappe – whose calf injury sustained in the first leg is expected to clear up – Angel di Maria and a revitalised Everton loanee Moise Kean lurk.

“We are playing a team with the most talented players up front,” Guardiola said.

“It’s not just one, not just two, it’s three, even 31/2. They can win the games in one single action. We have to play as a team with incredible mentality to win. We have to be aggressive to win the game, commitment from everyone.”

The first leg was traumatic for PSG. They were as lambent in the first half as City were in the second.

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Like City, they too have Champions League demons, much to the chagrin of their Qatari owners.

Last season’s runners-up had never reached even the semi-finals since 1995 and, under Pochettino, previously smooth waters have become choppy.

The winners of the notoriously weak Ligue 1 for seven of the past eight seasons, right now they find themselves a point behind the upstarts of Lille and while Mbappe has scored 25 goals in 25 starts, Kean is the only other player to breach double figures.

© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2021

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]

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