Ruben Dias and Pep Guardiola falter as Manchester City’s woes deepen with a shocking defensive display in a crushing 2-0 Champions League loss to Juventus.
December Champions League matches involving Manchester City have often been far from thrilling. Typically, these games are straightforward wins for Pep Guardiola’s team, often against significantly weaker opponents lacking City’s financial resources and overall quality.
The predictability of these matches made them somewhat dull, though they were worth watching in the absence of more competitive fixtures. City’s brilliant individuals often delivered flashes of genius, and their mesmerizing, methodical play—probing for gaps in opposition defenses with patient, side-to-side passing—offered a soothing, if predictable, spectacle on cold winter evenings.
Now, however, City has become the Premier League team to watch in the Champions League for entirely different reasons. A stunning and swift decline has left them in serious danger of failing to qualify for the knockout stages. Currently ranked 22nd, they must secure a win against either PSG (away) or Club Brugge (home) to ensure a place in the play-offs.
“You get confidence when you make a thousand, millions passes and it helps us to be who we are,” Pep Guardiola said in his pre-match press conference, as he, like the rest of us, searches for a reason for their extraordinary slump other than Not Having The Best Footballer In The World.
The players followed his advice, making 355 passes to Juventus’ 187 in the first half, but there wasn’t any sense that they were probing for weaknesses in the opposition, rather passing for passing’s sake, as one might do if their manager instructs them to “make a thousand, million passes”.
There was one good pass, from Kevin De Bruyne, who took the ball on the half-turn in front of the Juventus defence and in one smooth action slipped it in behind for Erling Haaland, whose attempted dink was well saved by Michele Di Gregorio.
But that was it as Juventus sat in and manager Thiago Motta played a waiting game in the Champions League that has so often ended in defeat for Guardiola’s opponents, as the pressure has invariably paid in the past, but all too easily from City’s perspective now yields results as their ageing team tires when previously they would either be seeing a game out or peppering the opposition goal.
There was a lot of noise during Ruben Dias’ absence over his importance to the team, and he’s been one of the best defenders about in the last five years, but he was ropey here, giving Federico Gatti far too much space for his acrobatic effort in the build-up to Dusan Vlahovic’s header, as the striker leapt above centre-back partner Josko Gvardiol to squeeze the ball over the line.
City did respond; there were at least nods to a better time as they started to build pressure, with bits of intricate play in the box, overlaps and overloads. For around 20 minutes or so they looked something like their old selves.
But this is where no Rodri really hurts them. There’s no danger in transition when he’s on the pitch. He sniffs out counter-attacks to the point where you don’t even really notice there was a chance of one.
There’s no way Weston McKennie has that much space in the middle of the park if the Ballon d’Or winner is playing. The ball probably wouldn’t even have reached him.
The American played a ball out wide for Timothy Weah and then volleyed home his compatriot’s return ball with no Manchester City player anywhere near him. A well-worked move but ludicrously, embarrassingly simple.
The chance arrives because there’s no Rodri, but the defending after that was appalling, with Dias playing Weah onside by being two yards deeper than his fellow defenders and Gvardiol pointing out players to mark and marking no-one himself. They’re a ragtag bunch back there these days.
“We run like a desperate team when we don’t have the ball,” Guardiola said before the game. He’s absolutely right but his solution to that being to never give the ball away when they don’t have the best metronomic passer and possession hogger in world football available is naive in the extreme and suggests he’s a man with no knowledge of football rather than one of the best tactician’s the game has ever seen.
And it’s not just his apparent inability to get his defenders to defend properly that was the issue in this game. While Motta’s two substitutes combined to score their second, Guardiola watched his team huff and puff to no avail for 79 minutes before his first change and then made his second and last on 87 minutes while Phil Foden remained on the bench.