Manchester City won the Champions League for the first time thanks to a 1-0 win over Inter in Istanbul. Pep Guardiola’s adjustment to City’s defence should worry Europe – he has evolved as a coach and found a new template to win the big games.
Eight league titles have been won since Pep Guardiola last lifted the Champions League, three in Germany and five in England. No wonder there is talk of it being his obsession. Twelve years on and he is finally celebrating European glory again.
The discourse has been dominated by comparisons with Manchester United’s treble of 1999 but it is the comparison with Guardiola’s great Barcelona side of 2011 that feels more revealing. A coach sometimes styled as intransigent has been on quite the journey.
If Barcelona’s win at Wembley represents the high watermark for his – or anyone’s – football, this 2023 triumph was more of a grind.
It should be of no concern to him or his players. There are 115 other factors that may yet tarnish this triumph but the manner of the performance in Istanbul is not one of them. Finals are won not played and City were worthy winners after a stunning season.
Even so, the way in which it was achieved, the contrast with the free-flowing football of a dozen years earlier, and indeed parts of this season, does reveal something of Guardiola’s shift in approach.
He suggested afterwards, as he has so often before, that these cup competitions are a coin toss – and it is worth pushing back on the idea that this City are self-evidently superior to the sides that have come before them. The margins in these matches are tight.
In 2019, they were the top scorers in the Champions League despite being knocked out at the quarter-final stage by Tottenham. In 2021, they conceded the fewest expected goals of any side despite nobody else playing more games in the competition.
