Finding the football in Man City's Champions League final

WHEN so much of top-level football is no longer about the pastime itself, it can be difficult for the game of association football to seep through, especially when said game is at the top level of that top level in the Uefa Champions League final.

But despite the issues surrounding their club and others, including Saturday’s opponents Internazionale, Manchester City, thanks in big part to Pep Guardiola, are still ultimately moving the needle in a football sense: still managing to influence it as a pastime in a world where the sport is now one of global capitalism’s political and economic tools.

Of course, styles of football themselves are part of the “product” that football has become. The trite marketing spiel from many organisations will contain lines about having an attacking football philosophy along with some myth about the game being played the “right way.”

But putting such blurb into action on the pitch and finding a way to let the football do the talking is easier said than done.

It is much easier to do this, though, when there is so much quality within your squad. In the 2022/23 season, City have run with a relatively small group but one brimming with quality and, importantly, the right profiles of player throughout.

The building of such an efficient unit, to the point where it is on course to win a treble and has a chance of winning the club’s first European Cup, doesn’t come cheap.

Guardiola has admitted as much on numerous occasions. He often comments with tongue in cheek, using his own brand of sarcasm that can be difficult to detect, giving the answer he knows the media wanted to hear but also answers rooted in the truth.

When asked in February 2021 what was the most important factor behind the club’s winning run, Guardiola quipped it was because his team “has a lot of money to buy a lot of incredible players.”

Going further back, to 2018, Guardiola said: “I can assure you one thing, it’s impossible to play the way we play, achieve the results we achieved without top players, and today the top players cost a lot of money.

“We need money to buy top players to play at that level all the time. To achieve these results, you need this investment. If not, you need a miracle and I am not able to do that.”

But Guardiola is doing himself a disservice to say it is all about the money.

Well, it is a lot about the money, and one benefit of having so much of it is City can afford mistakes in the transfer market other clubs can’t.

But at the end of it there still needs to be some organisation of the 11 players on the pitch into some form of effective football team.

One that can not only compete at the top level but can also advance the game.

Alongside City’s sound recruitment structure and financial power is a manager who doesn’t exactly play safe with the tools he is given.

The Catalan tactician will try things in attempts to take the football to the next level, rather than hunker down and then rely on the star players to produce something in isolation, detached from the rest of the game.

Jack Grealish has been a good example of this. The former Aston Villa man has morphed from a player who was asked to try to do everything for his team in attack to one who is now using his talent to complement the likes of Ilkay Gundogan and Erling Haaland, whose own outstanding seasons owe a lot to Grealish.

Manuel Akanji arrived at City from Dortmund amid doubts he would be good enough to play for the club, but Guardiola has turned him into a key component in their defensive line.

Similar could be said of Nathan Ake, who joined from Bournemouth and has been one of the best defenders in the Premier League this season.

John Stones has also been a revelation this year. His role has been an innovative one as some kind of modern-day Franz Beckenbauer, reinventing the old sweeper role where a player would move forward from the defensive line into midfield and attack.

City went from searching for the perfect traditional full-back for Guardiola’s system to ditching them altogether, sometimes playing with four centre-backs in defence or using the pace of remaining full-back Kyle Walker as counter-attack cover.

Guardiola continues to learn from other managers and has dished out plenty of praise in the direction of Brighton manager Roberto De Zerbi this season, describing him as “one of the most influential managers in the last 20 years.”

Shades of that Brighton side will be seen in the Champions League final in the way City occasionally tweak the way they play out from the back, trying to attract opposition players towards them to create space further up the field.

In terms of there being a right way to play football, Guardiola’s City are as likely to punt a long ball forward to Haaland, as they did in the opening minute of the FA Cup final, as they are to string 50 passes together from back to front.

Guardiola takes risks with City’s wealth in his quest for something more than just winning.

When it fails it’s dubbed “overthinking.” If it succeeds and earns City a treble this season, it might just be attributed to the money.

But amid the backdrop of football’s hyper-capitalist end game, no longer sponsored by Gazprom, Guardiola deserves some credit, and at the Champions League final in Istanbul, there might even be a glimpse of that recreational game of association football.