Manchester City has had one primary goal for the past 15 years. Since Sheikh Mansour acquired the club, their objective has been to win the Champions League. They have traversed lofty mountains and dense forests.
They’ve lost in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, and once in the championship game itself, thwarted by heroes and monsters and frequently undone by both internal and external adversaries. Inter, third in Europe’s fourth-best division, stands in their way.
The phrase “you couldn’t write the script” is often uttered during dramatic sporting moments. You wouldn’t write this. The narrative dictates that the final stage, the zenith of Abu Dhabi’s City project, should have a grander conclusion than this and that the final boss to be defeated should be more formidable than a group of things that were popular in England a few years ago: Edin Dzeko, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Romelu Lukaku, Goldie the Blue Peter dog, and social democracy.
Can Inter possibly win? Football’s greatest strength is that underdogs can win.
Inter demonstrated in their victories over Barcelona in the group stage and Milan in the semifinals that they are well-organized and proficient at controlling the tempo once in the lead.
Federico Dimarco and Francesco Acerbi have had excellent seasons and performed well in the semi-final, but Kyle Walker, having eliminated Vincius Jnior, is unlikely to be concerned about the left wing-back, and Erling Haaland, a 35-year-old central defender who spent the majority of his career at Sassuolo, appears unfazed.
Bayern overcame Inter twice 2-0 in the group stage, while City defeated Bayern easily in the quarterfinals. Their neuroses—Pep Guardiola’s shortcomings and City-itis—will be their biggest barrier in Istanbul. In addition, unless the city’s transportation infrastructure has vastly improved since 2005. When it last hosted the final, traveling from the city center to the Atatürk Olympic Stadium will be difficult.
This voyage has been arduous and fraught with frustration for both Guardiola and City. In 2011, he won his second Champions League with Barcelona at Wembley. If City were to defeat Inter, he would become the fourth coach to win the trophy three times, with the longest interval between trophies since Jupp Heynckes (15 years) and Ernst Happel (12 years).
Guardiola still has time to beat Carlo Ancelotti’s 19-year record.
During this period, Guardiola has been hampered in part by bad luck – games in which his team dominated possession but failed to capitalize on enough of the countless chances they created – but also by his anxiety about being countered and the tactical adjustments he made to prevent this from happening, his ‘overthinking’. This season has required no overthinking.
Similarly to Ajax’s 4-0 victory over Bayern Munich in 1973 and Milan’s 5-0 victory over Real Madrid in 1989, if City wins the trophy, the 4-0 victory will be remembered as one of those era-defining games in which paradigms shift and a new reality emerges. Possibly, this was the symbolic moment when the petrostate clubs ultimately surpassed the traditional elites, and, by extension, the moment when the hyper-capitalistic model unleashed on football by the Champions League’s inception came home to roost. On Wednesday in Manchester, a journey that began in 1987 with Silvio Berlusconi’s surprise that Napoli and Madrid, the Italian and Spanish champions, could meet in a first-round quarterfinal match, reached a turning point.
This has been expected for quite some time. Madrid has consistently confounded logic. The city could have easily administered a similar defeat in last year’s semifinals. Modern warfare has no place for cavalry charges. Despite all the talk of Seorio’s consolation, the self-confidence of the ancient aristocracy, and individual feats of valor.
Madrid possesses sufficient resources and prestige to not simply vanish, but it is conceivable that the last season will be regarded as the final, barely explicable flourish of that caballero culture.
The city, on the other hand, is not merely profoundly modern; it defines modernity. City has not lost since the Premier League lodged 115 charges of financial irregularities against them. Guardiola has changed the team minimally. Early in the season, there were concerns that Haaland was unbalancing the team, but those concerns have since dissipated. City have established themselves as a formidable force, obliterating all opponents, including old superclubs such as Bayern and Real Madrid.
Haaland has given clarity to City, which is perhaps his greatest contribution; there is no need to overcomplicate matters. This team’s intelligence and strength may not be guardiolismo, but they’re unstoppable. This is what a successful state initiative looks like.
Perhaps football, being the capricious old deity that she is, has one more trick up her sleeve. Maybe Inter will perform a miracle in Istanbul. The long-awaited European coronation of City appears to have finally arrived.
