Manchester City are Champions League favourites. So what?
Erling Haaland in action during training before Manchester City's opening Champions League clash against Sevilla at Manchester City Football Academy on September 5, 2022 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Tom Flathers/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)
By Sam Lee
Sep 6, 2022
Manchester City are the favourites for the Champions League this season. What else is new?
They have been for years now and, as anybody who doesn’t support the club will be happy to point out, they haven’t got over the line. Yet.
There has always been something to derail them and in the early Pep Guardiola years they just didn’t seem ready to win it, despite their favourites tag — and Guardiola even said that himself on a couple of occasions.
They have got closer since then and, this time, it really feels like they are the clear favourites. But what does that mean when football so often gets in the way?
“Sport, not just football, always gives you another opportunity,” Guardiola said, starting off optimistically. But then came the reality check of a man who has seen it all.
“In sport, football, you lose more than you win. It’s a difficult competition, we are proud to be here again and we will try again like we have from day one. In the first seasons, we didn’t get too far and in the last seasons, we got to the last stages and we try to perform well.
“Are we favourites, we have to win… fuck, I don’t know. It depends on the pitch, tomorrow, the next game against Dortmund, Copenhagen. It depends on our performance and if it’s good, we’ll deserve it — if not, we’ll go home and we will get some punishments from the fans, media, whatever, and keep going.”
He knew the question was coming, of course. As soon the topic was broached, he bowed his head, nodding sarcastically as he said: “Champions League… we have to win the Champions league…”
Guardiola was expecting questions about being favourites (Photo: Matt McNulty – Manchester City/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)
You’ll do well to find a conversation about City in Europe that doesn’t mention how the club’s owners are obsessed with winning the Champions League. In fact, that’s what Guardiola was asked. And they would love to, yes, but the noises inside the club are consistent: every year, the priority is the Premier League. Of course, they wouldn’t say no to the Champions League and it’s Guardiola’s way to try to win everything anyway.
But he knows as much as anybody that, for as well as things are going, it doesn’t mean they will end perfectly.
Before the quarter-final with Atletico Madrid last season, Bernardo Silva was asked if City had become better at dealing with the setbacks that had blown a huge hole in previous campaigns, and he said they had, for sure.
Guardiola was asked the same question, but his point was different: even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean they are going to win. As it turned out, those words were more applicable to the semi-final against Real Madrid.
At this point in the season, we never seem to think about the kind of factors that actually derail teams when it comes to the crunch. The kind of factors that derailed City in the past two seasons, for example.
In the 2021 final against Chelsea, the players pretty much froze on the big occasion — the club’s first final — and there was a side helping of a questionable Guardiola line-up. In May, they were within minutes of an extremely accomplished two-legged victory over Real Madrid, until in the 89th minute, they remembered they are Real Madrid.
This is how football works.
So there’s no point in getting carried away. About anybody. Even Liverpool got Real Madrided in the end.
But City do seem closer than ever now. All the things that have held them back in the past — being too open, too flustered by mistakes, the bad luck — and the lows that come from brutal eliminations against Tottenham in 2019 and Madrid in May surely serve to help them now. More experiences to draw from, more tools at their disposal.
They are closer.
And they have a truly scary team. Oh, the squad is not especially large, and that may be a problem later on — it was in the semi-finals last season with half the defence missing — but nobody can hold a candle to the kind of first XI that Guardiola could field with everybody available. If, by April, they play like they were playing last spring, only with Erling Haaland integrated, they will be a sight to behold.
Haaland has 10 league goals already and things haven’t clicked perfectly yet. Rodri, speaking before Guardiola, said City’s start to the season had been “great” but that they still have to improve. That’s normal, and if they do improve — if they do hit top gear with Haaland firing on all cylinders — it is difficult to imagine anybody stopping them. Not just now, but while Haaland — and Guardiola — are in Manchester.
But is that how football works? Maybe we’re falling into the same trap by making City favourites again. Real Madrid are still Real Madrid, are they not? Liverpool might be struggling now but in the Champions League things often change dramatically between the last-16 draw in December and the knockout stages in March, so it’s a bit early to be writing teams off.
Real came back to shock City (Photo: Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
What do we know now? Not a lot really. City just drew at Aston Villa, maybe they’d really struggle at, say, Paris Saint-Germain — the second favourites with bookmakers out here in Spain, incidentally.
Or maybe by April and May they will be as devastating as they look like they could be.
And even if they are… does that stop Real Madrid, PSG or even another Tottenham or Lyon? Of course not.
A Spanish reporter also asked Guardiola if his side are favourites to win it all, on paper.
“It’s a question they ask me every year in England when we are favourites — they ask if that’s right, and we’ve never won it. If they see us as favourites they are welcome, but I don’t value these things. The favourite must be Madrid, who always win it, but there are many teams, Liverpool, Bayern, Barcelona, PSG…
“When it comes to my personal expectations, I put them very low. It won’t change my life, like it didn’t change it in Barcelona. Being here is already a joy for us, and for Sevilla. All the teams in Spain, all the teams in the Premier League, all the presidents and owners would give everything to be in the Champions League the next season. The only thing I can say is that if they ask if we are favourites, what’s going to change? In England people say that a team is a favourite to be in the top four but nobody knows, or to win the Premier League, but how many games are there to go? The truth is that we only played four or five games.”
So what does it all mean? We don’t know either.
