Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City welcome defending champions Real Madrid to the Etihad for their second-leg encounter of the highly anticipated UEFA Champions League fixture.
The scoreline is balanced evenly at 1-1 heading into the second 90-minutes of the battle between the two giants, as the side from Manchester will be hoping to go all the way to get their hands on the trophy that remains elusive to the Premier League champions.
But they will be well aware of the quality and calibre of the record 14-time winners Real Madrid and their propensity to take the game away from the opposition in a blink of an eye, or in terms of manager Carlo Ancelotti’s mannerism, in the raise of an eyebrow.
Both teams have elite coaches who have tasted success at the continental level more than just once, and in the case of Ancelotti, with more than just one club.
And the fact that Guardiola hasn’t managed to win the CL outside his tenure at his beloved Barcelona is a prickly thorn in the rosy bed of the Catalan genius. The man who had led the Blaugrana to two Champions League titles, couldn’t replicate his feat at Bavaria as he failed to lift the coveted trophy with Bayern Munich during his time in Germany.
He did come close to the title at Manchester City a couple of years ago, only for Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea to snatch away at the dream of the 52-year-old.
While some may argue that the loss to Chelsea in the final was down to the Spaniard’s over-complication on the occasion, in which he opted to bench both his holding midfielders Fernandinho and Rodrygo- something he hadn’t done in more than 40 fixtures that season, others prefer to see it as a stepping stone. A means to an end, in which the mastermind has managed to turn the game into a sort of art form.
And former Liverpool player Don Hutchinson is one of those minds who share the opinion that Guardiola will finally get his due this year and pointed out the immense adaptability of the Spanish tactician.
“I think he is a very adaptable coach. I don’t think Pep Guardiola just has one system and one type of play,” Hutchinson began,
“I think you can look at the tiki-taka style of Barcelona and he had done more or less the same at Bayern Munich.”
“But I think when he came to the Premier League, he adapted what he thought could win Premier Leagues. He used Sergio Aguero as a false 9, and that definitely worked, but I think this season he has evolved and he has almost gone full cycle now that they have a big man in Erling Haaland, we saw that against Arsenal where their gameplan was to bypass the midfield and not really play though the mid at times, and they went long to Haaland,” the former Liverpool midfielder opined.
“Guardiola is a very intelligent coach. He is the grandmaster in the Premier League. He is chasing his 12th title in 15 years and I think when he is retired, in many years to come, he will go down as the greatest of all time.”
“He might need some Champions Leagues with Manchester City to confirm it, but I think he is the one in the order of Arigo Sacci, Johan Cruyff, and Sir Alex Ferguson, who had a real impact on the bearing on how football is played. And Guardiola seems to keep moving the goalpost with his style every two or three seasons,” the 52-year-old praised the Santpedor-born genius.
Middle East Ownership in England
Foreign ownership of valuable Premier League assets has become a point of debate amongst the wide diaspora of viewers of probably the most entertaining league in the world, and despite repeated claims of sportswashing running amok, a huge chunk of the monetary funds coming into the Premier League flow in the form of foreign currencies.
Abu Dhabi struck gold when they envisioned the Manchester City group, we have come to be familiar with in modern times, and their neighbours, Qatar, also seek English glory, as evidenced by Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani’s ambitious bid to gain control of England’s most successful club outfit on the other side of Manchester.
And a question of if Qatar can choose to remain still if the Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City fulfils their dream of finally conquering the most prestigious club competition in the world-The UEFA Champions League arises. And perhaps, the UCL trophy going to the oil-rich UAE might not appease the Qatari wealthy, which might prove an impetus for the proliferation of Middle-Eastern ownership on English shores.